Sarah McCall

Dear Endings,

dear so-called discontinuation
of being, dear cease & desist,
redundant in terms & also – you fallacy, lover
of false finishes, I want to know,
once and for all, about closure –
doesn’t everyone?  You aren’t god,
you’re something else.  But explain faith
& lapses of Catholicism, fervent genuflecting
for years then bam, upright for life & -isms
that don’t end in Amen, thankfully.  The faith
that keeps my grandmothers teetering on edges
resistant as my dog’s jaw on a bone:
Don’t take this from me, don’t you dare –
aren’t their graying crowns a denouement?
But no, each morning a wind-up breath
propels them back for just one more day.
I’m not sure if summer ended or if winter
won’t show up: my memory of four seasons
pummeled by global warming, if that’s even
a thing.  You would know, wouldn’t you?
About denial of a proper service, like exes
that ping my phone years later – still there?
Trains whistle all night though I’m certain
the train yard is full of rusted cars tagged
 & stagnant since I can remember.   At night
when I can’t sleep I play The White Album
in my head, like a dream, but even that
has a fake-out – Her Majesty sneaks in after
The End.  You love the heavy pauses,
don’t you?  How you keep the wait just so,
immeasurable like space, like time – the tail
of a hurtling comet, its sparkling body unresolved,
directionless.  It’s your universe, after all,
with fits & starts like doomsday now,
forever young tomorrow.  And merciless, always.



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Sarah McCall is a poet, yoga teacher, and student of language and self. Once she was an English teacher, and sometimes she was a bartender, but always a list maker and lover of clean, bright things. Sarah lives in Norfolk, VA with her husband and their two dogs.