Origins, Volume Nine, No.2 (2)

Herewith, the latest selection from dusted-off published poetry and short fiction, circa 1970s vintage and beyond....

Talking Back

I thought that
talking to photographs
of dear departed
was the last desperate act
of a senile mind
never realizing that
people locked away in their heads
often have nowhere else to turn.

I always dreamed about a
captive audience to receive
my unprotected thoughts
so wrote this fellow
whose poem had been so
poignant. He responded
saying I'd been the

only one to answer
the silent echo of his need;
the convict locked away
behind bars of steel.
Letters chatted back and forth
and one stranger whose body
was a prisoner

communed with another
whose head was also
that way. He wrote
wistfully of memory
of birds winging forests
and his incarcerated

birthday celebration.
In the last letter he
asked me to wish him luck
getting ready to put on kneepads
go before his parole board.
Looks like he's no longer

sending letters in search
of captive company.
Guess he doesn't need me anymore.
Wonder now if photographs
ever appear to talk back.

c. 1979 Rita Rosenfeld
published in Origins, June 1979