Nobody Loves Me

by Sean Chapman

You saw this title, thought
it might be one of yours
so you flipped the pages
with that smile of recognition
that flutter of anticipation
wondering what you wrote.

In the afternoons, locusts called me
through the wind in my head,
the shouts of friends drowned
in the Autumn surf.

But wasn’t love stitched
through the poem,
And the word “myriad?” Remember
you loved that sound —wished
for myriad lovers, myriad reflections
of yourself.

The sun carved a shadow off my bones,
a myriad sparkling cracked-candy voices
of children along the beach shrilled me
to the deep quieting waters off the shore.

But where is the girl — your La Dolce Vita
white angel? Didn’t she close this poem,
call your name, encircle your life
with her thin arms?

From the boardwalk her voice,
a distant crystal radio, mixed with the sounds
of surf, the weight pulling me down
through the blinding dunes.

But this isn’t even your poem you know
and nobody loves you still nobody loves you
nobody loves you still and this isn’t even
your poem.


After a year of living and reviewing films in Athens, Greece, Sean Chapman now teaches at ASMSA, a residential high school for bright kids in Hot Springs, Arkansas. He received an MFA from The University of Arkansas at Fayetteville and an MA from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. He has published works in The Laurel Review, Louisiana Literature, Zone 3, Water~Stone and elsewhere.