"The Man Talks About His New Telescope" by Charles Rafferty

It was a gift from my daughter. Twenty years agoI would have used it to size up a job,to see who had the best TVs, the mostpawnable bracelets, the smallest dogs.There was a time when windows would openeven with a grown man sleepingin the next room. I moved like fogthrough his belongings, and they becamemore valuable in my hands. It was easyto see how people weren't worthyof their stereo system. A glanceat their collections confirmed it.Now, I'd ruin a hip scrambling downthe fire escape. My fingers would shakeabove the safe's uncrackable combination.It's the same trouble I have with my wife's bra.But this telescope takes me in. I seethe fucking and the films, the boredomand the passion, the spinningtrays inside their microwaves. Every nightit brings the old life close enough to touchdown the long corridor of its lensesthough in truth I have never been further,and the city of my birth is really no biggerthan a pinch of furious stars. Charles Rafferty has published poems in The New Yorker, Prairie Schooner, and The Southern Review. His stories have appeared in The Cortland Review and Sonora Review. In 2009, he received a creative writing fellowship from the NEA, and his tenth collection of poems, The Unleashable Dog, was published by Steel Toe Books in 2014. His collection of short fiction, Saturday Night at Magellan's, was published by Fomite Press in 2013. Currently, Rafferty directs the MFA program at Albertus Magnus College.