Wrong Again (poem)

Posted by ractrose on 3 Dec 2022 in Art, Poems

This was better, more sensitive.

But so much silence in his conversation-mate

Must be a warning. “I’ve learned not to apologize.”

He thought, Why me?

A line of inquiry that promised to go badly.

“You’ve learned not to apologize,” she said.

The topic seemed to want a change of scene.

Of things to talk about there was the blazon

The spear that symbolizes victory

In the eagle’s talon on his pocket

“I’ve noticed yours is like everyone else’s.”

“I don’t know what you mean. Am I wrong again?”

To dream I say or think these things… “I suppose,”

she said, “if I had a club jacket, I would wear it, too.”

All round the room are prints in metal frames

Fashion plates signed by their creators

Fauna washed in colored inks, aloof

Just outside

Photographs of beach scenes peek

Striped umbrellas flesh and costumes

Not so much a smack of black and white

As unwitting imprints of atomic night