Poetry
Issue #2
Cleaner
We share a puke hued tabletop,
I clasp a porcelain cocoon
That promises stability (for my nerves)
In the dregs of its sickly liquid.
How would you say you felt when you did these things?
The words grate,
I know they displease him.
Silence diffuses,
Framing the guard’s booted
Footsteps, as he
To’s and fro’s his fear
Along the stretch of corridor
That his feet mistake for home.
My subject intones slowly that he felt nothing,
The words rest in the
Gulf
Between us
And for the briefest spell,
I envy him.
His kind fascinates me.
His unblinking eyes,
A trap,
My façade of calm
A crumbling partition of worn redbrick.
These four walls his place.
An inmate from conception
(The birth canal
Reneged on its promise
Of freedom)
As a boy,
He slept tethered,
In the cupboard’s
Clenched
Fist.
As a man,
Dutifully learned
The only trade he knew:
Sometimes suffering was in order,
I obliged.
Cut until there was only
Exposed flesh and ribbons of skin,
Smiling
He tells me of a game he played with them:
For the briefest spell
The expression he wears like another’s smock
Resembles remorse.
But
Wistful air turns
Chill
As I wonder how many times he’s watched
The tapes.
There’s that hush again.