“Keys” by Andrew Merton

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Bigger Than They AppearNear dawn
in a strange part of town

I lock myself out of my car.
Through the window I see

my keys in the ignition,
my phone on the seat,

and, on the floor,
a note from a woman:

What has happened?
I feel a terrible distance between us.

-Andrew Merton
Bigger than They Appear

“What a cache of treasures this collection is, what a cache of jewels. […] All are reminders of what the best, briefest poems can do: give back the world to us, as it passes, in the mirror of a few well-chosen words.”

-Cecilia Woloch

More from Evidence that We Are Descended from Chairs and Andrew Merton:

Andrew MertonAndrew Merton has been a political reporter and columnist for the Gloucester Times, The Boston Herald Traveler and the Boston Globe, and a contributing editor with Boston Magazine. His articles and essays have also appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, Ms. Magazine, Yankee Magazine and The Boston Phoenix. His book Enemies of Choice was published by Beacon Press in 1980, and his anthology In Your Own Voice: A Writer’s Reader was published by Harper Collins in 1995. His poetry has appeared in The Alaska Quarterly Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Powhatan Review, Paper Street, The Comstock Review, Silk Road, Third Wednesday, The American Journal of Nursing, and elsewhere. He teaches writing at the University of New Hampshire.

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