Reading the Room
A poem
Lowercase punctuation does
not insist on itself. Telling a
small story that is
largely embarrassing.
Minuscule on the outside.
Majuscule at the Library
of being disconnected
These are the ways and
meanness of family shrinkage.
Emptying of the pockets.
Calculating bus fare.
Required and public but secret.
No one dare ask a question.
People go away.
These are tiny things but so big.
You wait for the numbered tag.
The toiling for the answers
That wouldn’t dislodge from
that throat of infidelity.
An ashtray of evidence.
I am the telephone wife.
The one who watches
tv into the night and
for whom the smell of
cat urine is permanent.
Left to wonder how an
exclamation is yelling
at you for nothing.
Increments of innocence.
Not quite what Wordsworth had
in mind, except for
the hedgerows. So tiny.
