from “A Park at the Edge of the Country”

Austin Araujo | At the Park on the Edge of the Country | Mad Creek Books | February 2025 | 72 Pages

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Lost Year

How tired I was of all that bunk
in the brain explaining how unfit

for everything I was. Then I came to a door,
a storefront from which music poured

into the street. There was a sign
saying come in and paint. I did.

I saw a spot at a table beside a man
who told me the goal of the group:

approximate the still life on the table.
I’ve been inept at visual arts since I was a child.

My mother would say
I don’t know my own strength. The man

smelled of herb and offered me a puff
but I said I was waiting for someone

and wanted a clear head, a clean mouth.
His blond hair tied into a bun.

The woman in white coveralls beside him
did not raise her eyes from painting to say hello.

This endeared her to me.
Without looking, she asked

when I’d last heard a tree speak.
I didn’t want to lie so I studied

a corner of the ceiling as if working hard
to remember. She said, yes, the ones around here

keep to themselves. She held
a large brush with her left hand, and the right

she kept behind her back as if to say en garde.
The still life comprised two vases,

green and orange, three apples, and a ball
of golden yarn. What brings you here, the man asked.

My friend told me it’d be fun,
they should be here soon, I said,

panning the room, but they were not there
on the couch or at any of the four tables

or near the locally made jewelry
the store sold during business hours. 

My Condition

A doctor came to visit me on some days.
She’d observe in the rattan chair beside the bed
where I was flat on my back

even though I didn’t need the rest.
I wasn’t sick, far as I could tell,
just completely ignorant.

She told me that my dream
had been to work as an actor.

Watch films, she said.
When you watch films,
you’ll remember
that all a person is
is an image.

Of those she screened for me,
I liked the ones that didn’t rely on color.

I didn’t have the whole story down
but had no problem inventing many details

like the scholarly work
I’d neglected
before the accident
with its long digressions
on the epistemology
of hero worship.

The doctor, fingering the pockets
of her thin coat, didn’t think much of that bit.
You did not forget your life by accident,
she said, and you were no scholar,
but you could be a bit of a windbag.

Then she touched my forehead.
When she left, I went for a walk.

I couldn’t remember—
did I have many brothers

and sisters or had the whole
of the family’s ambitions lain in my lap?

From At the Park on the Edge of the Country by Austin Araujo.
Copyright © 2025 Austin Araujo.
Reprinting with permission of Mad Creek Books.