John Schneider

Self-Portrait as Pompei

There’s something about the way we maintain 
our beliefs about bodies, our own last breaths, 

how even as the world calcifies around us,
we continue to deny each moment. Whatever

the ghosts have to say, we have yet to hear it.
But there’s something about the way we keep

trying to learn to listen. How we’re terrified 
of sinking into the same hard earth now

sustaining us. If behind us exists a history of
ashen figures in permanent embrace,

there’s something about the way we close 
our own bodies off to tomorrow’s ghosts.

John Schneider’s debut collection, Swallowing the Light, nominated for the Hoffer Award, was published in 2022, his non-fiction book: Dreaming and Being Dreamt is forthcoming from Routledge in 2023. His poetry has been a Merit Award winner in the Atlanta Review 2021 International Poetry Competition He is also a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee. He lives and works in Berkeley, California.