Have you ever opened up an old photo album? Have you wrestled with the details of the ancient pictures? Have you realized no matter how foggy your memory is, you hold on to these snapshots for dear life? Michael Todd Steffen opens an album with his poem Generation Y.

Generation Y

In the old album of the photographs
That you took more than twenty years ago
A cloth of peppermint burns with night’s stars,
A dog retrieves a disc, Beethoven’s Ode
to Joy. Out of focus—upside down?—
The subjects, if barely recognizable,
Endure the image taker’s (maker’s?) fierce
Resistance to fulfill any expectation.
There’s the coq au vin, under an empty table
Dished out in candlelight. Why that was done
I should know better than to ask, yet am
At a loss now to remember the occasion—
Bronzed as it were in havoc meant for laughs.
But then ask anything to stand with time.
— Michael Todd Steffen

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