Story Telling (A Poem)

 

                           By Ed Ahern

Oral family history

is of its shifting nature

blotched by secrets:

misrememberings,

overstatements,

embellishments,

and flat out lies.

 

Those who still know

will rarely admit that

their cousin was a suicide;

they really didn’t graduate;

their retreat was a rehab;

their lifestyle is a sham;

their mourning is proforma.

 

The posed family photos

portray emotional proximity

belying everyday indifference.

But perhaps all the lying

unconscious or deliberate

holds a larger truth-

our narrative reality

demands a good story.

About the author: 

Ed Ahern resumed writing after forty odd years in foreign intelligence and international sales. He’s had over 450 stories and poems published so far, and ten books. Ed works the other side of writing at Bewildering Stories where he manages a posse of eight review editors, and as lead editor at Scribes Microfiction. His social media handles are as follows: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram