Stays by Jill Alexander Essbaum
Everything alludes to the mood of us.
This color, for instance, the color of you.
Blood-blue like the walls of the house we share.
Blue-black like the ravels in my hair.
.
Everything habituates the shatter of our glass.
This tiger of yours that mauls on command.
Or yours, the upper hand of dispute.
The furnace you promised to fix but good—
.
But didn’t. But haven’t. Or: Won’t. Ain’t gonna.
A tainted summer of untoward words.
The unnerved synapse ‘twixt said and heard.
The lapse in my verve,
.
The slap of your verbs.
How every well we’ve dowsed runs dry.
The drowsy oh wells, the soused betrothals,
The stab-wounds we dressed up in bedclothes.
.
Everything augments the flaw of us.
The lusters we lack, the lusts we’ve glutted,
The delusions we’ve slutted on analyst’s couches.
Your Stalinist urges. My purges. I reach
.
For the one-two punch of panic pills.
You sit and sort the bills. A pair of parallel hells.
The gods that goad us know our names.
The books you read disclaim my pain–
.
And everything stays the same, the same.
This poem was selected by Russell J. (Readers’ Services)
