Amit Majmudar, ‘Poem that Almost Rhymed’
Sometimes I visit bodies where I almost roamed
and the curves are made of clouds I almost dreamed,
a consummation missed by just a touch,
an air-to-air refueling broken off,
the hose retracted and the thirst abandoned
as both planes bank in opposite directions.
I hold my almosts in a contact list
of hands I never held, and never lost,
my store of acorns, little lids on ache,
my unmates boarding, one by one, an ark
that sails them, as it must, away from this life,
where I have these three kids, this house, and this wife,
although it could have been somebody else,
a past I passed on quickening my pulse.
When I pull my present closer by the waist,
almost wears the skin of never was.
*****
Amit Majmudar writes: “Poem That Almost Rhymed operates by slant rhymes, mimicking phonetically the speaker’s romantic near-matches that ended up being near-misses. “Close but no cigar,” as the saying goes: the speaker reflects on friends who almost made love using words that almost chime in melodiously coupling couplets. Incomplete. The sexual imagery is clear but hopefully sophisticated enough not to seem vulgar–particularly the coitus interruptus implicit in the image of mid-air refueling. The last slant rhyme “waist” almost consummates with “was”–two more letters, and the rhyme would fulfil itself as “waste,” the word that epitomizes the underlying regret of the speaker, who acknowledges his happiness but knows, too, that his happiness could have taken another form, perhaps (sigh) one that would have been an ever-so-slightly better match….”
Amit Majmudar is a poet, novelist, essayist, and translator. He works as a diagnostic nuclear radiologist in Westerville, Ohio, where he lives with his wife and three children. Recent books include Twin A: A Memoir (Slant Books, 2023), The Great Game: Essays on Poetics (Acre Books, 2024), and the hybrid work Three Metamorphoses (Orison Books, 2025). “Poem That Almost Rhymed” was first published in Bad Lilies. Majmudar’s next collection, Things My Grandmother Said, is scheduled for early 2026.
More information at www.amitmajmudar.com
“Missed Connection [day 111 of 366]” by Wondermonkey2k is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
