(She asked, more clipped than kind,
snapping my purchase into bag,
holding it slightly out of my reach.)
The colour fell, and I was pushed onto
the stage of uncommonly well-attended
open-mic night, where I can’t land a note,
but the audience keeps pointing at
something offstage,
their mouths forming the shapes
of a language I don’t know how to read.
Feet forward, I think, but I can feel
the frame of the shop’s exit door
pressing into my back,
Then his boxes tumble out of the air,
the ones I could never check,
hanging by the curls of bows
I could never tie.
Maybe she will believe that
I never needed the tides and the moon?
Because who cares about what
pulls the water when there’s a woman
in the elevator who keeps the edges
of her long sleeves
pressed into her palms every day,
her nails anchoring the seams,
even under the heft of August.
(“Oh, anaphoric collage—street-level, mostly.
More deconstructive than Dada, I guess,” I reply.)
-lh (01.11.21).
Lindsay Hutton 