“AFTERMATHEMATICS” is a confessional narrative poem blending neo-beat realism, dark lyrical storytelling, and contemporary tragic balladry. The poem’s greatest strength lies in its emotionally raw voice and its ability to balance intimate confession with mythic undertones. Through compact, conversational lines and recurring invocations, the poem creates the feeling of a witness account delivered somewhere between testimony, memory, and lament. Its language remains direct and unornamented, which gives the heavier subject matter a stark authenticity. Strong rhythmic repetition, internal rhyme, and spoken cadence give the piece the quality of a modern folk confession or underground torch song. The poem succeeds as a haunting meditation on trauma, intimacy, memory, and the difficult mathematics of human attachment. This poem is is included in the novella “A Shattered Cup of Doom.”, but is newly written and has not yet been assigned to a chapbook.
“AFTERMATHEMATICS”
molly swore me to her secrets
and dumps her mess with no regrets
i hear her
she lays a hand upon her chest
and by these truths she does attest
i hear her
molly told me that december
fire smoldered down to ember
when her man demand she sever
bastard child bond forever
what, by god, do mothers see
when cleavered clean from their baby
then in accord with destiny
aftermathematically
she left that man and turned to me
i know because she told me so
the numbers, names, her every tear
i could write a book about
the things she wanted me to hear
molly blue, the bitter queen
the darkness yet holds truths unseen
i wonder might there come a day
even she, herself can’t say
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