Dru Philippou

Absent Children

Sporadic comments and black-ink underlining mark most of the book’s brief prose poems. After reading a few pages, I start to anticipate the intruder’s observations. When the narrator loses his son and devotes himself to creating clay pots, the intruder notes Way of dealing with grief. 

In another piece, he underlines You throw your hand out to shield a boy from the passing cars, but the boy isn’t there and writes below it Reflex—did this happen before? I wish he’d focused instead on that time between the storms when Rainbows marble the oil-stained streets, and lights strung in the sycamores hover like a brilliant cloud. 

Later, the poet writes about cremating a body, and I place an asterisk beside his final sentence: That light, he said, is what I wanted you to see. 

	I don’t know
	where the dead go
	after they leave—
	perhaps they’re always with us
	but simply stop calling

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Note: The quoted prose poem lines are from Gary Young’s, No Other Life, Berkeley, California, (Heyday Books, 2005), 156, 157, 169.

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About the Author

Born on the island of Cyprus, Dru Philippou was raised in London and currently lives in northern New Mexico, where hiking in the desert wilderness nourishes her spirit and her writing. Her haibun “Afterlife” won first place in the Haiku Society of America’s 2021 Haibun Awards competition. She is the author of A Place to Land, a tanka prose memoir..

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