It looks like some sort of strange version of a concentration camp waiting room
we sit here in our matching drab khaki-coloured kimonos
with the opening at the front
the television's audio cuts in and out
and the image is shattered pixelation from a disrupted digital reception
but we stare at it anyway
or at our phones
careful to avoid acknowledging each other
As we wait I see she's crying
silently
just enough to require she dab the end of her nose with a tissue
she's texting someone
something, no doubt, no one should ever have to write
or read
she has the most perfect painted-pink toenails
beautiful in tan sandals
such an image of gorgeous femininity
while she sits in this clinic that detects malignancies
and I feel such overwhelming pride in the strength of my gender
my name is called and I lay down and open the robe
I think "God be with me" and she starts to probe
This is what I meant the other day when I said I thought yours were as good as mine. It's nonsense to say that: they're considerably better than mine, on average. I do a lot more is all. But this, I couldn't have done this. Surgical in its succinctness, subtly brutal in observation, with wit that isn't humor, but something to try to use instead, some kind of thwarted fight-or-flight mechanism. In only a tiny space, a brief moment, you manage as much compassion towards your characters as a really good novelist. Except you're one of them. And they're not yours. And there's no literary trick available to distance us out of there. Just a mute appeal.
ReplyDeleteSee, it's a fantastic piece. But it's also utterly beside the point how fantastic a piece of poetry it is. It's a rare poem that can make itself utterly beside the point, by the force and immediacy of what it communicates. And you end up talking about the poem, about how it goes about its work of saying - and end up looking like a bit of a prat in consequence, focusing on irrelevancies. And you know you do, but you do it anyway because you have to say something. And for what it's actually said - you have no words.
Thank you so much.
Delete