A Trick for Finding What You’ve Lost by Edison Angelbello

A Trick for Finding A Trick for Finding A Trick for Finding

What You’ve Lost

There is something wrong with me. Today I read a poem. At the top it said

For Trish

and automatically, I assumed that Trish was somewhere below exactly six feet of dirt. Either that or in an urn, or perhaps scattered over some mountain or the Pacific Ocean or the corner of Broward and Andrews.

I assumed Trish was dead, because I write poems for dead people. I write poems about dead things.

And there has to be something wrong with me. Because it didn’t occur to me that Trish might be

alive. Because it didn’t cross my mind that you could write a poem about something with a heartbeat.

I used to lose a lot of things. My dad told me that if I tied a red bandana to the bottom of his desk chair and spun around three times, Saint Anthony would help me find what I was looking for. I found toys, an iPod, car keys. It stopped working when I started losing friends. But here I am, still spinning—still writing as if my pen were strong enough to carve an epitaph into a gravestone.

I want to write a poem about that man who stands on the corner with the Jimmie Johnson hat and the ripped blue jeans and the shirt that smells of tobacco

and roses. I want to write a poem about life—not about bringing dead things to life, but about life itself. I want to write a poem about me, plunging my hands into the soil as far as they can go and feeling around for seeds or roots or a pulse or God knows what. and maybe finding it.

by Edison Angelbello