{"id":50679,"date":"2016-09-07T05:07:26","date_gmt":"2016-09-07T09:07:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blue-sea-697d.quartiers047.workers.dev:443\/https\/lithub.com\/?p=50679"},"modified":"2019-03-27T13:06:52","modified_gmt":"2019-03-27T17:06:52","slug":"then-after","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blue-sea-697d.quartiers047.workers.dev:443\/https\/lithub.com\/then-after\/","title":{"rendered":"Then After"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The following poem is from Justin Boening’s\u00a0<\/em>Not on the Last Day, but\u00a0on the Very Last<\/a>, forthcoming from Milkweed Editions in September 2016.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

THEN AFTER<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Then after I finished, after the pegs were good<\/p>\n

and in the ground, I stayed<\/p>\n

under the empty circus tent, and I sat like a nail<\/p>\n

at the edge of the center ring. I didn\u2019t know<\/p>\n

what to say. Hours passed. I sat there. Then<\/p>\n

out of nowhere<\/p>\n

a lioness entered the ring.<\/p>\n

And with my hands on her waist, her claws<\/p>\n

shining on my shoulders, we forgot the dance<\/p>\n

we\u2019d meant to dance,<\/p>\n

but we danced,<\/p>\n

kicked circles in the sod, imagined the children,<\/p>\n

the families, all filling the vacant bleachers,<\/p>\n

the ringmaster lifting a bullhorn<\/p>\n

to his wretched mouth.<\/p>\n

We would have taken a bow<\/p>\n

in the spotlight had a spotlight<\/p>\n

been shining on us,<\/p>\n

but we were glad to be rid of ourselves,<\/p>\n

even for a moment, glad to dance the dance<\/p>\n

that made our irrelevance<\/p>\n

more real, though our limbs<\/p>\n

lacked grace, especially mine, or maybe it was the dance<\/p>\n

itself that lacked grace.<\/p>\n

But we were glad to be part<\/p>\n

of the show, or part of the dance whose primitive<\/p>\n

lunges and flailing we repeated, and though<\/p>\n

the swaying couldn\u2019t be our own, though<\/p>\n

we would have never thought to move this way,<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
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we kept dancing.<\/p>\n

We heard the loose sound<\/p>\n

of a church bell whose cargo jangled each night<\/p>\n

through the streets, and after that, the far-off<\/p>\n

celebration of wolves or dogs or freaks<\/p>\n

wafting through the grass.<\/p>\n

We\u2019d meant to dance<\/p>\n

forever. That\u2019s what we\u2019d meant to do.<\/p>\n

But the lioness was getting tired,<\/p>\n

or I was,<\/p>\n

and the dance started to feel<\/p>\n

less like a dance and more like a language.<\/p>\n

And the lioness looked up at me, with a tear<\/p>\n

falling from her massive amber eye, and said,<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is it, you know.<\/p>\n

We won\u2019t be getting a second chance.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following poem is from Justin Boening’s\u00a0Not on the Last Day, but\u00a0on the Very Last, forthcoming from Milkweed Editions in September 2016.   THEN AFTER Then after I finished, after the pegs were good and in the ground, I stayed<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1086,"featured_media":240571,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[43074,43077],"tags":[19248,15845,212],"class_list":["post-50679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fictionandpoetry","category-poem","tag-justin-boening","tag-milkweed-editions","tag-poetry","book-not-on-the-last-day-but-on-the-very-last","story-type-poets"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blue-sea-697d.quartiers047.workers.dev:443\/https\/lithub.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/lh-holder-01.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/blue-sea-697d.quartiers047.workers.dev:443\/https\/wp.me\/p5rKFr-dbp","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blue-sea-697d.quartiers047.workers.dev:443\/https\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blue-sea-697d.quartiers047.workers.dev:443\/https\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blue-sea-697d.quartiers047.workers.dev:443\/https\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blue-sea-697d.quartiers047.workers.dev:443\/https\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1086"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blue-sea-697d.quartiers047.workers.dev:443\/https\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50679"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blue-sea-697d.quartiers047.workers.dev:443\/https\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50679\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blue-sea-697d.quartiers047.workers.dev:443\/https\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/240571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blue-sea-697d.quartiers047.workers.dev:443\/https\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blue-sea-697d.quartiers047.workers.dev:443\/https\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blue-sea-697d.quartiers047.workers.dev:443\/https\/lithub.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/blue-sea-697d.quartiers047.workers.dev:443\/https\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}