"Into Another World" by Sam Ambler

Into Another World

There was a child in the window
in the room of a house.
There were children outside, playing.
And the child could see them,
hear them, run away
when he looked close at the window,
hard, like a window,
and he felt like glass,
like a pane.

The voices of the children,
sometimes shrill and ringing high,
sometimes almost gone,
would take him from the window
and break him into pieces,
where he lay flat —
sparkling in the sun.
A glimmer in the moon.
Shattered underfoot.
A window,
where there had been
a child.

Sam Ambler

Sam Ambler’s writing has been published in Apricity, Avatar Review, Brushfire, Christopher Street, City Lights Review, Number 2, The Courtship of Winds, El Portal, Euphony Journal, Evening Street Review, Glint Literary Journal, Headway Quarterly, Hearth & Coffin, The James White Review, Mount Hope Magazine, Nixes Mate Review, The Phoenix, Plainsongs Poetry Magazine, Red Wheelbarrow, Talking River Review, Visitant, and Wrath-Bearing Tree, among others. Most recently, he was featured in the anthology Voices of the Grieving Heart. He won the San Francisco Bay Guardian’s 6th Annual Poetry Contest. He earned a BA in English, specializing in creative writing of poetry, from Stanford University. He delivered singing telegrams and sang with the Temescal Gay Men’s Chorus in Berkeley and the Pacific Chamber Singers in San Francisco. He has worked in nonprofit theater at Berkeley Rep, Geffen Playhouse, Actors’ Equity, and The Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts. Now retired, he lives in California with his husband, visual artist Edward L. Rubin.

Headshot: Edward L. Rubin

Photo Credit: Staff