Perhaps there is no present, and existence is built of the alterable past moving into the alterable future, and then through the opaque door of death. Or perhaps there is neither past nor present, as if the person were a ship on a journey through the perpetually mutating future. Kurt Brown"'s collection of poetry, and the title poem, "Future Ship," highlight such convolutions of time. Brown is tormented by time. In the title poem he writes, The way out is the way in, and The deeper we move into the future the more we disappear into the past. Aware of the memories that travel with him, unshakable, he writes of family and friends, whole neighborhoods, villages, vast cities, or hunks of them" People haunt him. Like the deceased grandmother in "Grandma"'s Rye" who is still demanding Get me my rye! It"'s not a warm loaf of bread that she wants.
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