Killing Frost (poem)

Killing Frost

Morning on the inside is only glass and curtains

A saint might have heard voices

He fingers the fly in the ointment and fills a pot

With liver-colored beans no stench

Like the burning of chili powder and this punishing cheap food

And wariness too fine to read

He lies to avoid

All talk, all times, with all comers

Lies where the rowing boat is beached

The yellow hat a deeply veiled scam, throwing a gauntlet

But he may not have seen these things

Or tells himself to face down every threat

Hatch every plot

And make hasty pudding of a kiss

Kinship surveyed on a chart

The azimuth the only spot

For an audition

Constantly, if he were not

In a state of plummeting

Dinner from a sidewalk cart suits a blinking plodder

Hands plunged in boiling oil

And out with the tongs comes the frozen grip

He sees them all as tiny souls

All the crying bubbles, bursting beans, the floating bits

Of blackened grit

And hears the most evanescent squelch

Killing Frost

A Faint Hint

 (2016, Stephanie Foster)