We both know that he only wants to criticize.
The train rolls on, works looms.
I had hoped to get in a few pages, but no.
The skull in the book won't shut his pie hole.
I tell him it's about a woman
whose husband has a secret;
it's about a girl
who hears voices from her closet,
and it's about a cat
who stays on the stairs in the dark, watching.
The skull in the book scoffs.
He wants spies and intrigue and sex.
"There is, Skully," I say.
He frowns.
For a while I describe the scenery to him.
He hasn't got eyes, but he has curiosity.
He tells me to kiss him, he's a Prince.
"You wish."
At my stop, I tire of it all,
and discard my book with the skull in it.
I can hear him, fuming inside the barrel with the coffee cups
and McMuffin wrappers.
I think I won't go to work.
I stand there for a second, stupid and a little afraid,
like a woman who wakes up not knowing where she is,
how she got there, what this strange body is
or why she's inside it, casting about for a clue.
________
Your descriptions are always so amazing. I love the cat who sits in the dark, watching. And the way the woman feels on waking. That is SO the way i often feel. I felt i was inside this poem as i read. It doesnt get much better.
ReplyDeleteThose McMuffin wrappers are the exact device needed to bring this surrealism to a reality Snap.
ReplyDeleteThis is the kind of out of body experience I can relate too. Talking skulls? Hell, yeah!
ReplyDeleteHow disturbing to open one's book--surely the most confirmed place of private solace, and find there the thing one is trying to get away from, that dialogue in the head(or in this case, *of* the head) that annoys and teases and questions and leaves no peace. I love the details and richness of the book that has to be discarded like the messy results of a bad decision, too. The final sense of disorientation ends it on a perfect note of full-circle mental/emotional unrest--a place to which you always give us the best guided tours. Exceptionally fine poem, Shay--the roll continues and the bar floats skyward higher each time.
ReplyDeleteYou've described what my daughter tells me depersonalization is like. This is an intriguing read - loved. la la Mosk
ReplyDeleteSkully wasn't enough? Clearly a skull with poor taste.
ReplyDelete