Portside

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.--1984


While revising history at the Ministry of Truth, 
Winston takes pride in his work, 

careful to keep details consistent when writing 
a speech for a hero who never lived, 

or reducing the size reported for last year’s 
chocolate ration, so this year’s will feel generous. 

These things seem small, the way, perhaps, denying 
you slept with & paid hush money 

to a prostitute seems small, but when our leader 
tells obvious lies, even small ones, 

it teaches us to mistrust our own senses & frays 
the fabric of our shared reality— 

that’s why Winston’s so careful—one loose thread
can unravel the rug we stand on.

Goebbels understood how the baldest lies can be, 
through repetition & dissemination, woven 

into something that looks & feels real—Facebook does 
it in a keystroke. When Winston finds the photo 

proving his boss lied, he panics & stuffs it down 
a “memory hole” to be burned. Is truth then

just a construct that can be thrown away? No, of course 
not. What happened, happened, independent 

& regardless of how we see or recall it. But, if a truth 
exists only in memory, what happens 

when we forget, or die? Our shared & stored history 
is what pins us in place & time. 

How can a future exist if we can erase or revise the past? 

Rebecca Foust’s books include YOU ARE LEAVING THE AMERICAN SECTOR: Love Poems (Backbone Press 2024) and ONLY (Four Way Books 2022).  Her poems won the 2024 James Dickey Prize and the Telluride Institute’s Fischer prize, and in recent years, the New Ohio Review, Pablo Neruda, James Hearst, and Poetry International prizes. She divides her time between Marin County, CA, and Minnesota.