Transposed (poem)
Transposed
The wreckage walks mumbling through a slack jaw
that’s right
he tells himself, some plans in ruin are transposed
Today the wretched knick-knackery composes all
Dry cleaning, tweeds to wedge away until
the sky turns grey
Arch, the eyebrow raised, the place descending
Underneath the bridge where cups
bob in the waterway
His charade is not a pretense he means
to grapple with it all again
Transposed, or more a shell game
where at length the chickpea rolls
And here three watchers on the span
One with a camera and another
Who meets the mumbler’s eye and says
I know
Water
Today the river flows
in color the blackened underside of an iron pot
or the eely prickling skin of a bottom dweller
Beans for dinner
“The heart,” he thinks, “the earthly death.”
The cat and her kittens mewling in the drainpipe
Certain in their knowledge
that the human hand is unkind
claw back their commentary
Transposed
Dum-dum
(2019, Stephanie Foster)