Billy Clem
From a Displaced Person
Dear Madame or Sir,
They found us, their torches blazing
blue and yellow, beacons in a white air
writing a story you’d know on sight.
Patrol arrived in boots and hats, large, heavy,
the likes of which we’d never seen before,
almost comically serious, if a little late.
But, this was never the risk we were told:
it was pre-ordained, like viruses traveling
the night and transferring unknown to you
and, at once, you’re no longer yourself
but something running from a fever pitched
as high as possible, naked and not dreaming
someplace you won’t be taken. I write
this note to you from my bed—
what passes today as my bed—
pillow less, blanket less stone,
a palimpsest of stories too terrifying
to recover if they could be uncovered
and known by so small a man as myself,
so insignificant as to need—
I am in your hands, lined as they are
by labor, maybe love, loss certainly,
hence you’re reading this in a place
where anything is possible.
Please, do what you can
for my wife and children
I am yours, sincerely,
Billy Clem’s work has appeared in Great River Review, Vox Populi, The New Verse News, Counterexample Poetics, Moon City Review, and Elder Mountain. He teaches composition, multicultural literatures, and women’s and gender studies outside Chicago.
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