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)