ELEGY WITH PSYCHIC by Maja Lukic
She will not tell me about my death.
Outside is a blue Asheville sky
and the blue mountains one always sees—
except here in the psychic’s small
bone-chilled room. She says my mother
is proud of me, and my father wants me to
release my anger. Our access to the afterlife
is not equal—she can see them, hear them—
mother, father, grandmother, their faces
as if lit by candles. But I am standing
in a doorway, yearning into a darkness
giving nothing back. It is not warm there,
it is not kind to me. There must be a ceremony,
she says. I could scatter ashes in the blue Adriatic.
I could find an old cemetery. It’s clear from
the way she speaks, it’s me who won’t let them
rest. She sees California, she tells me I will write
three books, and the number strikes me as low.
It sounds like my life will be as short as theirs
or shorter—but I don’t tell her that.
Maja Lukic is a Brooklyn-based poet. She received an MFA in poetry from the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Narrative, A Public Space, The Adroit Journal, Bennington Review, Image, Sixth Finch, Copper Nickel, the Slowdown podcast, and elsewhere.
23 September 2024
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