Tim Tomlinson [USA]

 

My Generation
 
once again I
am
 
the only one
naked
 
at the party
what
 
is wrong with
my
 
generation
 
 
Fugue Hallucination While Listening to Cat Stevens, 1971
 
A boy sits
on a Persian carpet
 
hovering a foot
above the floor
 
in the center
of many other boys
 
exactly like him on other carpets
exactly like his carpet
 
hovering
above other floors exactly like
 
his floor and those other boys
on other carpets
 
above other floors
circle slowly
 
round the central boy
on his central carpet
 
above the central floor
like blades spinning
 
round a pinwheel turning
on or turning off
 
an awareness that forms
and transforms and dissipates
 
and reforms a question at the hearts
of all those boys
 
on all those carpets which is
which one of the spinning boys is
 
the boy?
 
 
People Ask
 
People ask
why I don’t
 
have a son.
The answer
 
is easy:
I was one.
 
 
Author’s Bionote:
 
*Tim Tomlinson was born in Brooklyn, raised on Long Island. He is the author, most recently, of “Listening to Fish: Meditations from the Wet World”, a hybrid collection of poetry, prose, and photography concerned with the splendors of, and the perils facing, the world's coral reefs. His other books include “This Is Not Happening to You” (fiction), “Requiem for the Tree Fort I Set on Fire” (poetry), and the chapbook “Yolanda: An Oral History in Verse”. He is the founder and director of New York Writers Workshop, and editor/co-author of its popular text, “The Portable MFA in Creative Writing”, which has been used in graduate and undergraduate writing programs from Australia to Iceland, as well as in India, the Philippines, the EU, and the US. He is a Professor of Writing at New York University’s Global Liberal Studies Program,  and at the Deledda Master in Creative Writing, Sardinia. His website:https://www.timtomlinson.org/