The Thursday Club Almanac of the Dead by Leslie Marmon Silko
Thursday night
Empty auditorium
Lines of coffee cups
Decorate the greeting table
Partially lit
The room
A circle of mismatched chairs
Orphaned in the middle
Quiet before everyone arrives
Hear the soft ticking of the clock
We all come here
Every Thursday night
Sitting in our assigned seats
Ready to confess
Reveal ourselves slowly
In stories of pain, addiction and regret
Compare our memories, each a scar
We break open
To bleed out a lesson we learned
We are trapped animals
With our bad habits waiting in the shadows
To snatch us back into our nightmares
So we meet here
Thursday night
To remember ourselves
To protect ourselves
From ourselves
Poetic Trials 