This is Not For Your Eyes
by B.V. Marshall
You will invite
this poem to dinner
without your parents’
permission. You will not
horrify them; the poem
is light enough to pass and exotic
enough for spice. You will
decorate this poem with
your attention,
decant it with care into tumblers
so easy to grasp,
drink in the aroma under scrutiny
and a tasteful chandelier. You will
receive the poem
in the dark; let it
uncoil your hair while it curls your toes.
You will fondle the poem.
You will take the poem into you,
as it stiffens and say the poem again and again like a mantra.
You will not stain the sheets but wonder,
briefly, if the poem
will remember your name
next Tuesday when the slick streets
force you back to rolodexes,
palm pilots, cubicles. Then,
applying a glaze
to your fixed lips you will
see the poem on a far away bus.
You will not wave, or shout or recall
the rhyme. Your parents will
have enough sense to keep mum. They serve
dinner again. The linen gleams
as if it were never touched.
The poem walks
under a marble dome, shoots
a teller, a guard and self.
You will see
this on your cable and
shut the channel.
(Published in Obsidian III // Summer 2005 // Vol. 6 No. 1)
