You don’t want the glass of orange juice you just poured
once you receive the shock of the first sip
after brushing your teeth.
When you come to the end of a run
heaving, hands on knees, it is not as funny
as they think it is, when they tackle you to the ground.
Your breathing is startled out of all sense of itself.
Your lungs, think my god what now -
and your teeth
are still reeling
from what you did to them.
You are in shock, out of breath and cringing.
So am I.
I checked Facebook. I had one ‘add me’ request.
I clicked on the man’s name -
my friend’s boss
He had just one
photo album, named “Anna”
with a photo of me and him taken at a party
last year, when he was 65. (I am 25.)
On his wall, was my name
in two questions:
“How is it going with Anna?”
I have met him twice.
“Is she still single?”
This is not the first time
this has happened. Once a 74-year-old
had a drug dealer do a full-size painting of me
on his Living Room wall, naked. I was 14 that time.
When I walked in everyone else
laughed hysterically.
It isn’t this though.
It is the thought of them both pulling at themselves
their wrinkled bodies rising to meet my face like a fungus
from damp creases, imagining some other me,
who likes this, who says things
and when
it comes
it is my name called out to the walls
it is me that the neighbours wonder about.
Comments
animan | April 12, 2008 - 21:54
phwaw, this is creepy - if true, and about a real event or indeed events,then I'm sorry. Really not nice. I'm learning a lot on this site - many different perspectives. I wish I could think of something useful to say. But I can't - I'm in shock. It seems a bit irrelevant in a way to say this, but perhaps not, but of course I realise that a large part of the effect of all of this description in the poem does of course come from the economy and drive and discipline of the writing. (And I do like the play on 'affect' and 'effect', of course.) Deary me, though.
HaiAnh | April 12, 2008 - 22:11
Thank you for your comment animan. I didn't intend for the poem to be so dark or seedy. In fact, quite the opposite, initially it was going to be light hearted.
It isn't until you look back on some events that you realise how weird they were.
The description was because I wanted the reader to feel the shock in the same order and way that I did on discovering it. There are some very strange people in this world and I always seem to meet them.
littleditty | April 18, 2008 - 17:01
so do i...your poem is aces - well done indeed.
HaiAnh | April 18, 2008 - 23:58
thank you littleditty. x
Yutka | April 19, 2008 - 12:25
Some superb imagery "their wrinkled bodies rising to meet my face like a fungus" it made my hair stand up...
Yutka:)
sunshine | April 26, 2008 - 08:53
the shock certainly does come through, the contrat with relatively innocent...relatively harmless... possibilities in the opening stanzas is in stark conrast to the final events. A deserved POW