Myronn Hardy
Poetry
Myronn Hardy is the author of five books of poems: Approaching the Center, The Headless Saints, Catastrophic Bliss, Kingdom, and most recently, Radioactive Starlings. His poems have appeared in journals such as The New York Times Magazine, Ploughshares, Indiana Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, FIELD, and elsewhere. He divides his time between New York City and Morocco.
No Longer
But we don’t know each other.
Haven’t swapped three sentences.
That corner where you scream
demanding money is a vacuum
where bitter oranges quietly
sour on thin boughs.
We are no longer friends?
But we never were.
The words “longer” “friends”
I don’t deem you understand.
“Longer” means time.
“Friends” compel time
we never made.
We know nothing of each other.
I assume you inhabit a margin a
different one than my own.
You know all in this town of addicts.
You take from those not from this town.
The town knows what you take.
The town knows your leg was taken from you.
Knows you hide steel in its place.
On that corner every morning
shouting for the luck you
never had no longer friends.
Never friends.
Never.
Listen: