Diorama of a Grand Failure
Bernadette Geyer
Let two men inhabit the cardboard box
with their paper hands in their paper laps
on their paper chairs with the paper clock
a silent nod to the fallacy of time.
Let fake breaths ricochet from wall to ceiling
to stir the heads of our creations —
though there should be a formality to the chat
conducted within the box.
It may be appropriate for one or both parties
to be constrained by a mutual distrust or love,
which binds them like the bead of glue that affixes
the two-dimensional door to the inside of this box.
Let the wives be off building fairy tales with children
young enough to be graced by the bliss of ignorance.
Bless this diorama of a grand failure.
If there is a story behind the scene, free our men
from this artifice, prevent another chapter
from being written in the book
that would have contained both their lives.
If there were sense enough, stay the hand
that wields the scissors; add no more
to this dismal effect of thwarted domesticity.
Burn the paper before it divides our scene
into easts and wests of doubt.
Dry up the indelible markers that quiver
just inside the lines and never stray beyond.
From The Scabbard of Her Throat
Available from the Word Works
Also available from Small Press Distribution
Bernadette Geyer’s poetry collection, The Scabbard of Her Throat, was selected by Cornelius Eady for publication in the Hilary Tham Capital Collection series of the Word Works. She is the editor of the anthology My Cruel Invention (Meerkat Press, 2015), and her poems have appeared in 2015 Poet’s Market, North American Review, Oxford American, Verse Daily, and elsewhere. Geyer’s translations of poems by German poet Ulrike Draesner have appeared in Asymptote.
