Poems

Table Talk

He stepped out of his self as if it were a lovely loose
dress you slide off shoulder by shoulder and drop

so it falls and pools around your ankles and you just step out.
He wanted to see what he looked like from the outside,

what they all looked like, sitting around the table, half drunk
bottles of wine all over it, plates pushed aside, long-handled spoons

balanced on the edge of low flat bowls and him, slightly slumped
back in his chair, forearms at oblique angles to his chest, palms turned

towards the ceiling – that’s what he looked like, but what was he doing?
Holding court ? God, no, but the others were leaning in and some of them

even had their faces resting in the hammocks of their own hands.
All he was doing was talking about boredom, playing a game with it,

taking it and turning it on its head like a big beautiful hourglass
he placed in the middle of the table, showing them how, if they let themselves

sink into boredom’s bluey grey waters (that’s when he’d turned his palms)
...