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Groundwork

by David Michael Wolach



Tonight I left bloody footprints
on the steps leading to my office.

I have no office. We of the part
time have no debt. Isn't that lovely?

I did not commit the crime. I merely
walked through the crime scene.

I am not an accessory. They call
me a witness. I witnessed nothing.

Someone asked if I did it
and I told them the sun fell

long before I was born. These footprints
are not mine, they are my shoe's.

My legs did the walking and my feet
trudged through this fantastically manicured shrubbery

and before I could ask you where I'd gone
those tracks were laid to history.


David Michael Wolach, 28, teaches philosophy and literature at The Evergreen State College. Prior to coming to Evergreen Wolach served as a union organizer in New York City. An emerging writer, Wolach's essays, fiction, and poetry have appeared or are forthcoming in Storyglossia, [sic]Journal, Poetry Midwest, artisan, Sein Und Werden, Saint Elizabeth Street Review, Thieves Jargon, and Sorites: A Journal of Philosophy. Wolach was named a finalist in Glimmer Train's Fiction Open and recently won The Peralta Press Editor's Prize in Fiction. Wolach is also currently one of the managing editors of Wheelhouse Magazine.