What Tense, What Timeline

By Diane Raptosh

I wonder what tense to use when speaking

of the dead. My dad is gone but lives in me,

also just above the left side of my head.

He became part of the past’s future present

the moment his car flipped. Today he was + is.

My aunt wis. Peter wis. Josephine wis. Teresa wis.

What is the tense that points to the world inside

this one—here and not quite—part of some ancient

new mind still on its way? What to make of robberies

of the self as result of routine? I’ve let go whatever

I thought the world might be, its rash enlistment

of bodies. Its hunt for new serfdoms. Once upon

a time, the earth had more couth in it. All this to say,

if I have to enter the world, I step in from the other one.

Diane Raptosh’s collection American Amnesiac (Etruscan Press), was long-listed for the 2013 National Book Award in poetry. She served as the Boise Poet Laureate (2013) as well as the Idaho Writer-in-Residence (2013-2016) and in 2018 won the Idaho Governor’s Arts Award in Excellence. Her ninth book of poems, I Eric America, was published in 2024 (Etruscan Press).