Lodestar Quarterly

Lodestar Quarterly
Figure reaching for a star Issue 14 • Summer 2005 • Poetry

After Math

Michael Montlack

secretly I avoid
keyboards, calculators
anything with symbols

like + even t

similar reminders

but what's to add?

losses?

I carry them over

++++++++++++++++++
++++++++++++++++++
++++++++++++++++++
++++++++++++++++++

a graveyard

a plus error

+ error

t error

God's accountants
cheating, overtaxing us
sub+rac+ing us

I +ried logic +ables, algebra, +rig
no+hing comes up even
no+ even me
a minus
+oo busy mul+iplying losses
+o equate my own nega+ive
wi+h some+hing good

Michael Montlack has been published in New York Quarterly, Christopher Street, The Cream City Review, New York Native, Mudfish, In The Family, Bay Windows, Skidrow Penthouse and Gertrude. He lives in New York City, where he teaches at Berkeley College. He finished his MFA at The New School in 2005 and was awarded a University of Connecticut Soul Mountain Retreat Fellowship to complete his first book of poems: Liz Taylor in Levittown.

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