You Are Alexandria, by Timothy Tarkelly

Poetry, chapbook, 24 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

Some memories feel too big to be real. How can two people live through the same story but walk away with two different endings? How do we move on when we can’t even agree on what we’re moving on from? Haunted by the faults of human memory, we are only able to see our side of what transpires. It begins to feel like we only exist as long as we are remembered, and that nobody remembers us anymore.

You Are Alexandria is a poem with fourteen poetic footnotes. It shows a deep-dive into one’s own retelling of events, searching through memories for receipts, files, evidence of a life lived before it is all carelessly burned away and forgotten.

Timothy Tarkelly’s work appears in As It Ought To Be Magazine, Muleskinner Journal. Flyover Country, and more. He is the author of several collections of poetry including The You We Know and Love (Spartan Press), A Horse Called Victory (Kelsay Books), and Python Tutorial: Poems on Rebooting Society (Poets Choice). When he’s not writing, he teaches in Southeast Kansas.