pith…

The soap opera organ announces
what we can hardly bear to hear.
A metal-aproned matron
summons the skin ribbon
she left on the seat of a Galaxy 500,
circa 1969. Her tremolo
is a casual torture. We mistake
her voice for a choir of a thousand
muffled mothers and wobble dutifully in
to an Easter dinner of wood duck
and greens. There are no roses
around our scarred 3D hearts
or arranged in the centerpiece
that absorbs what words we can pick
from our teeth. We are weary, heavy
weary, of managed creation and sick
from songs that tempt us simply
to silence. We scrape cold beards
of frost with manicured nails,
screeching at the April windows.
Our fathers were fools to store
their small-grained harvests
in such broad-slatted barns.
We watch the mess heap up
with the snow and the hyphens.
Nobody clears the faux-oak table
but the talkative furniture
does our screaming for us
and a phatic nation learns to curse
in shrunken frontier tongues.

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joesmith

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© joesmith. From “The Way the World Comes In,” a collection of pieces you can buy if you want.