Photography © Jennifer Matthews

 

It Will Get Better

It will get better.
This is what they said.
I expressed my sorrow.

In time it will change.
It will get better, they said.
Learn from experience.

This grief is a foreign language.
Once they came to our job.
They took our co-worker.

He had been wanted.
They put him in handcuffs.
He did the perp walk.

He smiled as they led him away.
It will get better, he said.
We didn’t see him anymore.

It didn’t get better.
They knew we were angry.
They began to fear us.

It will get better, we said.
One had an identity crisis.
They took him away.

They said not to worry.
He would get better.
He never came back.

 

John Garmon is a poet at the College of Southern Nevada, Vegas. He is a former Marine, former president of Berkeley City College, and author of an essay in Oddball Magazine. His poems appeared in Ploughshares, Radius, Prairie Schooner, Southern Humanities Review, Oyster River Pages, Concho River Review, Poet Lore, The Oregonian, and many other places.

Poet/Photographer Jennifer Matthews’ poetry has been published in Nepal by Pen Himalaya and locally by the Wilderness Retreat Writers Organization, Midway Journal, The Somerville Times, Ibbetson Street Press and Boston Girl Guide. Jennifer was nominated for a poetry award by the Cambridge Arts Council for her book of Poetry Fairy Tales and Misdemeanors. Her songs have been released nationally and internationally and her photography has been used as covers for a number of Ibbetson Street Press poetry books and has been exhibited at The Middle East Restaurant, 1369 Coffeehouses, Sound Bites Restaurant in Somerville and McLean Hospital.