Rise Up Review
Just Because I Know The Architecture Of My Closet Doesn’t Mean I Want To Go Back
The first time I even
saw the door was
right before I chose
to leave
It seemed unworthy,
with its cheap pine,
of a grand exit so
I tunneled under it
My coming out
was an evacuation
It made sense
as the voices from
under the floorboards
had always been so
friendly
The ground will eventually
have us all, so why not
shake the boards above us
in stomp/stomping joy?
I was ready for the world
as I had already done all
my dying inside
the vaulted ceiling
with so many low
hanging beams that seemed to sing:
This is what you deserve, yet
will still condemn you to hell
but the steeples held no heaven
and hell/the floorboards/earth
were always warmer, so I took
30 some odd years to dig
dig my way out/communed
and learned from the dirt
life comes up from the ground
not down from the heavens
and I am still emerging
I don’t have to
look back to know
the door and the floorboards
and the beams and the catacombs
have all burned/ash sown the earth
and in its place now stands a meadow
the most fitting of tombstones
—Paulie Lipman
Paulie Lipman is a former bartender/bouncer/record store employee/Renaissance Faire worker/two time National Poetry Slam finalist and a current loud Jewish/Queer/ poet/writer/performer. His work has appeared in the anthology We Will Be Shelter (Write Bloody Publishing) as well as The Emerson Review, Drunk In A Midnight Choir, Voicemail Poems, Protimluv, and Prisma (Zeitblatt Fur Text & Sprache).
