The Fare Forward Poetry Competition: Honorable Mention
Galaxie
By Ted Morrissey
Long after you were gone she accused you
of infidelity, alleging an affair that seemed
surely a product of confused recollections,
slippage, years of bitter loneliness—the
ultimate abandonment: running off with
death for parts unknown, no phone calls,
no letters on cheap motel stationery,
not even an apologetic picture postcard.
But your eldest dimly recalls frightening
words followed by a scarier icy silence
due to a woman’s shoe found beneath
the Galaxie’s broad seat: only a hint, then
as now, of a life and a need unknown—like
an isolated planet in an uncharted system.
Ted Morrissey thinks of himself primarily as a novelist who tries to craft each sentence with the care and precision of a poem—a lesson he learned from his literary idol, William H. Gass. His most recent novel, The Artist Spoke, won the Maincrest Media Award in Literary Fiction. A lecturer in Lindenwood University’s MFA in Writing program, his novel excerpts, short stories, poems, essays, reviews and translations have appeared in more than 90 publications.