WITHOUT WORDS
My individual decision making
Is immaterial. But I’d like to be on time today
So in an idealization I make the train
And there’s a clean blue square for me
Where I can sit with the baby
Who wants to kick me
Where it can kick me. Hello baby.
A concrete version of events whizzes
By like a cinderblock, which,
In the pedagogical setting,
Recalls gymnasia. I can see a locker
Which has been aestheticized into a file cabinet
Like hairs in a hairdo,
All sprayed together.
And if you want to be practical
You can put your things in there. Magnesium.
But in this case it’s a building
And the lights are on, so presumably,
There are people inside.
Next station. How do you feel about that?
Negatron, captain…
I’d rather detach a limb than tell you how I feel
By which I mean I place my hand
On an emerald velvet curtain, and
Then wave it back
And forth in a gesture of amicability
As though this curtain, up until now
Wrapped in plastic, would too like
The comfort of human touch.
I would wager my land on it.
What land?
You feel so good, I cooed to Patrick, who replied, no,
Patricia, you feel amazing. The brief moment
Elided, but we had felt an amplified sense
Of what we feel every day.
Just like when the infant just wanted to be held
As we departed the fly-ridden house.
He had been fed and cleaned.
He who makes demands of his parents.
I then needed to drink some water, which I
Did out of the faucet, ever
The operagoer who drinks from a faucet.
His name was Jan-Paul and he too poured
The fount of knowledge upon us.
He had traveled to Rio de Janeiro, Bayreuth,
Yelled his detractor, to the others in the yellowing cabinet, Paris,
Staring blankly at what was before them, Milano, Tokyo, the sink
Or the mirror, Boston. A solution to my thirst dawned
On me by the end of the day. How sad, he said,
Only in Boston, how sad.
Patty Nash’s first book of poetry, Walden Pond, was published by Thirdhand Books in 2024. Website: patty-nash.com.