David Harris Ebenbach

CANDIDATE

I’ve been thinking a lot about life, and you’re a good candidate,
I thought I heard my wife say; it was over the phone,
roughed up by distance and the funny way she said it.
Actually she’d said, and you’re a good part of it, which was
nicer to hear, really, but by the time that got cleared
up I had already made the journey, wondering about
myself, whether I was, really, such a good candidate
for being alive, for living a life, and what I had ever
done to bolster my qualifications­I did take the time,
the other day, to see the light off the yellow reflector
on a neighbor’s car­and then I wondered at all the
years I’d put in by then­always one more test, one
more epiphany, one more valid form of identification--
what it takes to declare your candidacy, and to pursue
it: every morning, again, the arduous and infinite nature
of the application process.

David Harris Ebenbach’s poetry has appeared in, among other places, The Beloit Poetry Journal, Subtropics, and Mudfish. His first book of short stories, Between Camelots (University of Pittsburgh Press), won the Drue Heinz Literature Prize and the GLCA New Writer’s Award. Recently awarded an Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council, fellowships to the MacDowell Colony and the Vermont Studio Center, and a nomination for a Pushcart Prize, Ebenbach has a PhD in Psychology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an MFA in Writing from Vermont College. Find out more at www.davidebenbach.com.