issue106burntmemories

                                   ZYGOTE IN MY COFFEE.COM

***BIO*** Josh Stewart is spending his summer writing, hanging out, and working at a summer camp. It has been great fun, thanks.

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Burnt Memories In The Ashtray

by Josh Stewart

No one can quite identify
the smell
that defines a crowd –
not the
coffee, cigarettes,
or alcohol –

a different addiction,
equally self-destructive.
It’s the smell of something
dying,
            the decay of deep layers
covered up by the skin.
It’s the smell that wrinkles noses

in a crowded room.
They say that smell
is somehow tied
            to memory,
that a smell can trigger

faces to jump out of the clouds, or
echoes to leap out of shadows,
so I wonder
if the smell of a crowd is from an attempt
to purge something unpleasant,

to vomit out memories
of childhood
that don’t mean as much as they used to, or
don’t mean as much
            as they should.

I also wonder whether,
when the wind blows my direction,
there are hints of what I’m forgetting,
what things I’m losing
            in my addictions.

May 2008

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