"Bureau of Missing Persons"

Click here to listen to James Reiss read this poem.


In the dead writer's last short story the characters
have no names. They speak without quotation
marks in a setting that looks less like a penthouse
than a storeroom for books and old scrolls.
Still, when they stride out to their terrace
and peer over the city, they swear this
is the ultimate high-rise, the true resolution
to a plot involving disappearances. Like
a bureau of missing persons, they gaze
down at holiday shoppers, taxicabs yellow
as sunset, and swear they'll find dog walkers
dreaming up haikus, day-trader night readers
of eBooks—all stalking the sidewalks. Each evening
the atmosphere deepens. The short story loses its way.

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