The More Modest the Definition of Heaven, the Oftener We're There

by Albert Goldbarth


Years later they let him go. New evidence
—somebody's shoe and a letter, and then
another man confessed. So along with the cheap gray suit
and job ads that they all receive, he
had a brief note of apology. I suppose some people
go wild or bitter. But this is what happened to him:
we're sitting up way past midnight in August,
the six of us, hoping for a breeze. The air
might move in a solid block,as if pushed
by a streetsweeper's broom, but you couldn't call it
a breeze. Hot isn't the word. The stars
only make the sky a sore throat. And one of us,
Sally maybe, says we must be dead because
it's hell for sure, and the rest of us laugh, but
he's been called far out of our bent little circle,
you can tell by his eyes, they're filled with the moon,
with the simple delight of seeing the moon touch all of us
all over without a bar in the way,
without the shadow of even one bar
to fall on the light like a nightstick.