This was written in late December. Haven't found a title yet. What's new.
I come to the table with questions.
These will be the last, I say,
but on this surface
no voice takes on the task.
Potpourri in gold gift-wrap,
and blocks of imported cheese
uneaten on the black wood.
Next to him her face is animated
and milk-white. He nods in
pantomimed sympathy, his hand
smoothing her nervous leg.
Across the table I am the guest,
watching, my insides bowled over
and body flattened by the reoccurring
mistake. A fever, an infirmity
made pure by sleeping fiction.
I am only sleeping. I know this.
We’ve met here before, with
and without sound, or taste.
I see through his affinity to
varied black.
Each time is real as day, repeating
the same deferred fact,
gesturing the silent answers.
1 comment:
this poem reminds me of a dream that presents a surreal, but oddly real, tableau. (you're dreaming again) i love how the images and diction are concise, esp. in the second stanza where the potpurri is wrapped neatly, the cheese cut into discrete shapes, his sympathy masking something. the motion seems as like in a play, deliberately done, felt and not felt.
and this image of pantomime struck me: the blanked surface which barely touches or conveys something real. in addition, i love that the answers are silent, the world is without taste or sound, & emotions are stamped out like blocks on a chessboard.
i kind of want to see how the poem would differ if you changed the breaks, perhaps to reflect the stop-and-start quality of the thoughts.
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