September 12, 2016, Filed Under: Authors“Possibility of Repair” This poem originally appeared in issue 12 of The Bat City Review as part of its James Tate Tribute. List from Tate’s notebooks Possibility of Repair Now we grieve waving fuzzy avatars in the clotted air, virtual mourners lining up to testify to a glimpse of a wisp of your hair. A bunch of phonies, you might say, where were you when the fox got stumbling drunk on mulberry wine, when the cat caught and released that woodpecker onto the crooked ladder of my spine? Ham and cheese on a hillock where before us Mohawks and mountain lions and countless freshmen and maybe a few freedmen once sled. Some soggy children, a lost Spiritualist or two, late to the orgy, their donkey having taken a wrong turn early on, but you know what they say about all paths winding up the same hill. Over-complicated, the hooks and latches on this brassiere, by which I mean embrace. Beloved nobodies, deranged neighbors, doppelgangers every one, who among us is willing to look with proper awe at the gossamer fawn newly pushed from its flesh palace into the wrong season’s brisk air? Snowflake, turn out that blue light. Somehow we’ve ended up in the yard again counting turkeys by hindsight. Saintly, they’ll be martyred beneath the paling sun. Come on, we whisper to the near disappeared. Come on, come out, come up. Ok then, we say, go on, some boats are made for one. Lisa Olstein is the author of three poetry collections from Copper Canyon Press: Radio Crackling, Radio Gone, winner of the Hayden Carruth Award; Lost Alphabet, a Library Journal best book of the year; and Little Stranger, a Lannan Literary Selection. She teaches in the MFA program at UT Austin. Related content “Behave Thyself” Remembering James Tate