Caught Alone (poem)
Caught Alone
Loved one, they gather on the stairs
The passageway is closed
The door will jar against a darting shape
Unnoticed, their kind, snuffed in the daily cataclysm
One will tear the fabric
Go
She is standing in the kitchen of her mother’s house
Caught alone
Under the pop-eyed voyeur’s thumb
She hears disjointed blurbs of speech
They come two or three times
Over the telephone’s open line
A mind like a termite’s nest
Chopped in the blender of cultish whispers
Reassembled in the conqueror’s chalice
A tumor of lard
Finds this valedictory declining fuss
Heartbreaking, stirring, condemnatory, just
The mockery of solemn things is more than
She can understand
O, the battery, the battery is dying
Its tiny voice is piteously crying
Syllables of digital diddly-hoo
A mylar balloon is flying, loosed
From the used car lot where once it bobbed
“For sale”—for nothing—“There it goes”
Loved one, in this room, they’ve laid a sash cord
And the window is unlatched
Others lionized in death
Trembled here to heal the wayworn breach
Caught Alone
The Dismaying
(2015, Stephanie Foster)