MAY 1998 | VOLUME 2, NUMBER 1
POETRY
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David Hunter Sutherland
RICHARD FEIN lives and works in Brooklyn,NY. He is a contributing writer to Renaissance Magazine. more
IN BOX
COLUMNISTS
LINKS OF THE MONTH
QUESTIONNAIRE
RICHARD FEIN
The plodding of the seconds across the numbers
nudges the minutes only by singular degrees.
The analog clock face seems almost bored.
Time loiters.
White knuckles press hard on glasses
filled with the obligatory sparkling wine all here must buy.
In the light, dancers make their ritual movements,
while the failed twosome idles
on the dark edge of the spotlight.
Their conversation spent.
Their mutual audition failed.
In the din, silence settles between them.
As like ions, they repel.
But polite convention straps them together until...
They yawn,
with more than bored indifference.
Far away in some jungle river
hippos wallowing in muck,
face each other with blood-red tears and yawns.
Their gaping mouths are weapons,
as they back off from their mutual trespass.
But here at the tri-state singles wine & cheese bash,
these two keep their metaphorical fangs sheathed
as they back away with lacquered etiquette
holding glasses of flat drinks.
The music stops.
Dancers disperse,
fleeing like refugees into the shadows,
filling the growing gap between the stillborn twosome,
who lose each other and themselves
in the mob scene that follows the dance.
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