Wally Swist

The Chair

PUBLISHED IN FOLIO 2025: VOL. 40.

I still have your chair
positioned across from me
during meals. The chair

is not a token for you
and your absence but it is
where you actually sat

next to me, where I would
guide you through the plots
of films, where we would

hold hands, occasionally you
cradling mine in yours, both
of us in our own ways trying

to stave off the inexplicable
anguish of your memory loss,
sometimes we would transfer

the anger to tenderness,
where in the chair’s empty seat,
I still imagine you, turning

your head to face me, leaving
the insistence of your
lips broadening into a smile.

Wally Swist has several new books including Aperture (Kelsay Books), poems regarding caregiving his wife through Alzheimer’s, and If You’re the Dreamer, I’m the Dream: Selected Translations from Rilke’s Book of Hours (Finishing Line Press). He was selected as a finalist for the Stephen Mitchell Translation Prize for his collection Wild Rose Bush: The Life of Mary and Other Poems by Rainer Maria Rilke. His poems, essays, and translations have appeared in Chicago Quarterly Review, Commonweal, Healing Muse, Montreal Review, North American Review, Poetry London, Other Journal, Rattle, and Your Impossible Voice. Huang Po and the Dimensions of Love (Southern Illinois University Press, 2012), selected by Yuseff Komunyakaa, was co-winner for the 2011 Crab Orchard Open Poetry Competition.