Tomorrow and Tomorrow

Is anything more ridiculous

than a calendar? At least clocks

are round, mocking

us with their ticks,

the rectangle on the wall

fluttering months in the wake

of electric fans.

The sun doesn’t bother

with them, moon shines

her phases her way, won’t even answer

to Dilsey. Oceans and rivers

don’t meet tee times, carry clubs, or keep scorecards

the family land across the branch

full of traps now, men with crooked sticks

calling your sister’s name out like a candle, players strutting

as if on stage,

Caddy,

her muddy drawers a distant memory, more moons away than

distant ghosts of the tree’s

leaves that aren’t there, absence disturbing

the longing in your heart

like a Boston winter:

you have to kill a tree

to see how it lived—

leaves and wood tell different stories.

Iron yet another.

I was an idiot to think

the sound of my fury

signified anything,

but as I lay dying in the empty

sanctuary,

I felt the light in August

and became a flag in the dust.

⛳️

Author note: familiarity with Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury is necessary for comprehension of the ideas expressed here.

Published in the 2026 North Carolina Bards Anthology