Eight: Withholding (poetry series)
Withholding
What is the act of picturing, given in imperative
What is useless while pitiless while infectious
Or the opposite of good
What is the consequence of forked currents and
stoppered things uncapped
What is the doghead to the loud man’s fingersnap
What is the faith that errand runners get their tips
What errand runners seeming to have laid their prints
In fossilized depressions rites of a commonplace bent
What roaring, jawing, neck-worrying, but shining, ringing
Space-dominating, figure gains the adoring eye
What office, being held confers a means of making
Questioning a crime
What is the leaky sack of borrowed time
Swung careless shedding Things to Do Together
What is beyond excuse a case of poor prioritizing
What is a case beyond excuse of poverty in listening
Of scavenger hunting in neighbors’ houses envying
Tags unclipped from middle-class possessions
What is the patient teacher of the slowest learner
What currency in flowering reduplication
Floats every boat and never cheapens
What parting of fingers squeezing dimes what stress
The argument is never yours to win
What, again the sack, the mind unshelved and dusted off
Spoken, prepared at least for speaking, the long promised
Coming of age story for elderly juniors not yet grown
What is the merry hornet’s nest prodding of the otherwise
Disabled as to right-things-being-done
What shame if the one in command
Is boringly expected to give orders
The Death List shared with charity workers
What is this shrugging accidents will happen
What needing what is wanted now and other people
Are not me and I get nothing from a book of fetishes
What is the defendant’s plea
Only countersuits and fresh venues
Withholding
Enemies
Red God White Sun
(2019, Stephanie Foster)