Sheets of written words decorate the walls
of an industrial art room of turquoise, black and grey
where cerebral ambitious liberals are waiting
to be touched, inspired, entertained
while the city is busy with its mundane
tragic, simple, crazy life outside,
inside the microphone echoes
with the breathy p’s of the author
She reads fast, reluctantly
as if willing the poem to end
rushing through words of pain,
carnage and strangled vulnerabilities.
She thinks deeper than she likes to speak
her long fair hair falling to cover her shoulders
and back and black dress
and her neck -
the neck she exposed for her lover to caress with scissors,
relinquishing herself to be cut by love and loss,
ready to bleed out in fuchsia,
an octopus in front of predatory eyes.
She drinks her fifth glass of something
and sits quietly, her eyes letting out
the darkness like sepia ink into the night
deflecting any interest and praise away.
She sits amid literary analyses and observations
empathic proximity and Freudian synchronisation
and thinks about the words, the cuts,
the soulful numberless in the soulless world,
and the “what is the question” question.
After all this logomachy,
a little ray of sunshine comes along
recites a little poem of her own
“why did you bring all these books with you”
she asks the author
“To sell” is her simple response.
Lots of really nice details in this – from the satirical-sounding ‘cerebral ambitious liberals’ to observations (‘the breathy p’s of the author’) and phrasing like ‘strangled vulnerabilities’, ‘She thinks deeper than she likes to speak’, ‘the soulful numberless in the soulless world’. I get a strong sense of what the event was like and the demeanour of the poet from this – and the ending is great. A really nice touch.