Being Wrong
Alan Semerdjian



You’ve got a question
that burns a hole in the space
in between us.  We’re looking
at each other in the dark,
two sides of the same war,
solutions to a problem we don’t name.

One always has to be right,
and the other something else,
some other shade or language,
a noisy code, a fence.

If I’m wrong, then let me be wrong
like the motion of a maple in November air,
like the conviction of a man
going nowhere for an afternoon,
an evening draped like a curtain
covering nothing but the full
and still of heavy drop.

And if being wrong feels this
right, let yourself be wrong too.
Let us all be that kind of wrong
with a gift of tempering, evening
the sway of prolonged silences
burning to level and finally speak.

About the author:

Writer, musician, and educator Alan Semerdjian’s poems and essays have appeared in several print and online publications and anthologies including Adbusters, Diagram, and Ararat. His first full-length book of poems, In the Architecture of Bone (Genpop), was released in 2009. He currently teaches English at Herricks High School in New Hyde Park, NY; writes a monthly column, essays, music reviews, and other kinds of prose for LI Pulse; and resides in New York City’s East Village.