1. Who
Knew
The man
Would jackknife,
Leave his lovely wife,
And abandon his preschool kids?
He told me once, “I hate my life.” So who knew? I did.

(I am vaguely Catholic, so I am prone to believe that any
confession, however casual, is a Holy Confession. Isn’t every secret a
sacred possession? Shouldn’t I honor any intimacy with my silence? Or
am I just defending my friend? But, damn, what kind of man leaves his
family without kissing them good-bye? And what’s more, he left them not
for another woman or man, but for a studio apartment with a big-screen
TV. Should I feel guilty for remaining friends with this bastard? Do I
become a liar whenever I conceal the lies of another man, no matter how
much I love him like a brother?)

2. “Meet
Me
At noon,”
X said. She
Waited for fifty-
Six minutes then sent X this text:
“I love your forgetful ass, but we’ll never have sex.”

(There was a time, twenty-one years ago, when X romantically loved
her—when he drunkenly waded through a shallow pond in his haste
to get to her. He could have walked around the water, but that would
have involved a deviation from a direct line. He pursued her like this
despite the fact that she was—and is—a lesbian. Romance has
always been an impossibility. And yet, these days, whenever she flirts,
he remembers exactly what it felt like to want her so much—to
dream of kissing her beneath a streetlight while unkissed strangers
wander past them.)

3. He’s
Free
But served
Thirteen years
For rape and car theft
Before a new DNA test
Exonerated him. He says, “Freedom hurts my chest.”

(The prosecuting attorney still believes the right man was
convicted. “I have no doubts, none at all,” the attorney said to a
documentary crew. “And I will go to my grave knowing that a guilty man
has been set free.” The case depended on eyewitness testimony. The rape
victim, an eight-year-old girl, first told police that she was attacked
by a man who looked like her neighbor. After hours of questioning and
coaching, she changed her statement and swore that it was “actually”
her neighbor who raped her. Another witness, a different neighbor,
swore that he saw the accused man steal a car. The witness was allowed
to make this claim despite the fact that he was extremely nearsighted,
it was nighttime, and the suspect was sixty feet away. The nearsighted
man swore that he recognized his neighbor’s “eccentric gait.” The jury
took only three hours to deliver a guilty verdict, and the judge
sentenced the accused to seventy years. But all of them were wrong.
They convicted an innocent man. Does that make them liars? Must one
purposefully lie in order to be called a liar? Or can a
mistake—an accidental misidentification—also be a form of
lying? And whom do we become when we are confronted with the
truth—with a direct refutation of our closely held
beliefs—but still refuse to admit to our wrongs? During a press
conference the day after his release from prison, the innocent man
swore that he held no grudge. He said he just wanted to get down and
kiss the ground, though the ground remained unkissed. He said he
forgave everybody and that he wished all of them his best. But he kept
repeating—said it three or four times—that freedom was
hurting—was killing—his chest.)

4. I
Sighed
When she
Passed by my
Desk. I wanted her;
She wanted me. We never kissed.
Twenty years later, I still dream about what I missed.

(She loves her husband and sons; I love my wife and daughters.
Neither of us wants to change our lives. I don’t want to kiss her now,
except, I suppose, in my fantasies. But I am still curious about all
the reasons why we never acted on our passions. Why didn’t we ever take
that first step toward removing our clothes? Were we afraid? Were we in
denial? Perhaps we just didn’t want it enough. Or is there a larger
question? Do all of us become liars when we don’t kiss those people who
make us tremble and who tremble for us?)

5. “Whites
Lie!”
My dad
Drunkenly
Shouted to the sky
Then madly climbed into his ride
And promised us that he’d only drink a few. He lied.

(My father only talked about broken treaties when he was drinking.
He died six years ago of alcohol-related kidney failure. But I was not
at his bedside. I’d never promised him that I would help him die, so,
technically speaking, I didn’t lie, but whenever I talk to my mother
about my father’s death, I have to avert my eyes. I also had to avert
my eyes when I first saw my father—no, my father’s
body—lying in the coffin. My sisters—twins—leaned
over to kiss my father, but I could only imagine the coldness, the
taste of absence, so I did not kiss him. I only held his hand, and only
for a moment, before I fled back to my chair in the front row, where I
grieved alone and yet so publicly.) recommended

57 replies on “Unkissed”

  1. Dear Stranger,

    Please have this young poet read this poem and record it and post it on your website as either an audio recording or a video! It begs to be heard/seen. I can already hear/see the distance and numbness and noble American resignation/defeat in this young man’s voice. (I can also hear/see his parenthetical voice being conversational, avuncular, ripe with sarcazm and unintended meaning.)

    I sense a long career in this restless and still developing writer. I’m glad the Stranger furthered his career with a Genie…

  5. I loves me soem Sherman Alexie, but I think this poem misses the mark…in more ways than one.

    If you’re gonna start publishing poems, how about some Jorie Graham or Louise Gluck???

  6. “This week, for the first time in our history, The Stranger is publishing a poem”? How could you have forgetten Sam Mickens’ sestina or whatever it was from the last Regrets issue? I haven’t laughed so hard in ages.

  9. Lovely poem, but are times so bad with literary journals that Sherman Alexie is being forced to publish in The Stranger? Sign of the times?

  10. @maths: it’s not the number of words that follow the sequence, it’s the number syllables. count them. it works out: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13

  14. Actually, danindowntown, Sherman will reach audiences in the Stranger that might otherwise never be exposed to poetry.

    But I’m curious about the text in between the poems. The paragraphs sound as if they are reflections by the poet, but…. daughters?

  16. @frasier- your sincerity is adorable atop your obvious obliviousness. The guy’s already a “famous poet”. Well, he’s as big as any Native’s gotten yet, and as far as we can tell right now, that’s as far as any Indian’s ever going.

    Just enjoy it. It’s already there.

  19. @ Bun Yes, I know that, I too am a Seattle local and lifetime resident. What is your point in stating that? I still think Sherman Alexie can do better than publishing new work in The Stranger, unless this is part of an attempt by The Stranger to raise the level of content in its pages.

  24. I
    Find
    Those few lines
    Were for the pale and weak of mind.
    I read that mild tripe, taste bile,
    I double-bend, retch, and puke butterflies

  27. I love the poems, but are the parenthetical comments really necessary? Yes, they fill out the page, but they destroy the natural succinctness of the form, and any sense of mystery or myth. Love you, Sherman.

  29. How in the world can you people be discussing left brain math and technical minutia in a totally right brain creative effort. What do you mean gotcha – When someone is creating from the soul – technicalities should be dumped so the soul can listen. Did you even listen, do you have a soul to listen with?

    santafepea

  32. I am an ardent fan of Sherman Alexie and old enuf to be his grandmother. I read the Stranger every chance I get, it isn’t very available where I live, so mostly get to read it in Seattle. Thanks so much for this wonderful poem. Ive learned where this approach came from and enjoyed the poetry. Thanks to the Stranger.

  35. I just enjoyed them, even if they aren’t perfect in how many sYllables, a welcome change from that blather about the sonics, a reminder of what it is to be human/fallible.

  36. i clicked on this but somehow missed the fact that it was an alexie poem…halfway through i thought ‘this sounds like alexie…’ then got to the bottom.

    i love.

  37. Dudes, I’m glad you like the poems. But Sherman Alexie isn’t some up-and-coming young schmuck. He’s, like, an institution of contemporary American literature.

  38. sonnet for leela

    If my words would fail me in this task
    of bringing you close to me, to my arms
    then I fear that I would lose all interest
    in words. I would put aside this hobby

    of writing sonnet after sonnet, no
    more late night scribbling could give my heart hope
    and the world would never know of me.
    So if you are bad news then I’m the worst.

    If you think you’re no good, you’re not the first.
    Come fold yourself into my arms again;
    I don’t care if you have another man.

    You could slip me money, discreetly and
    I would be your happy whore. If we’re to
    meet again I cannot leave you unkissed.

  40. I’m not concerned about the faithfulness to Fibonacci’s principal, I just don’t see how it adds anything to the poem. True, it provided him a framework within which to work (like sonnets or haiku) but the structure should never over-power the content. Alexie didn’t do that, exactly, but he let his prose overpower the whole piece. It wasn’t a poem, it wasn’t 6 poems. It was prose, competently written, with a gimmick of syllables and rhymes (numbered for no good reason) as a header.

    Dear Stranger, unfreeze your hell, you haven’t published a poem yet.

  47. @mybong’snameissherman
    I get your crit of the prose addition to the piece, but think of it this way. How much more did you appreciate Tintern Abbey when you realize Wordsworth’s dedication of it to his sister, and its relevance to the burgeoning Romantic movement. Did knowing that Kubla Khan was inspired by opium or that Allen Ginsburg was gay before you read the material lessen their respective merits?
    Also, being completely unfamiliar with the poet above, my first reading with the prose led me to doubt the veracity of the parenthetical additions. I thought it added subtlety, especially to something like the constrained poetic form which might otherwise have felt a little flat. Eh…

  48. Sherman that was fantastic. I loved it. All of it.

    To the peanut gallery: 1) Sherman is not a “young” or “developing” writer. 2) the Fibonacci sequence here is completely accurate. 3) The parenthetical parts are wonderful.. and it’s still a poem if the creator of the work says it’s a poem (check a dictionary) so.. 4) Layla shut the fuck up with your smug self.

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