LYNN EMANUEL

Circumstantial

The neon blinking is a cursor:
You are here, inside the inside,
peeping out from the copse of
three day growth. This scene is
steno: cot, bottle, body stretched
on the wrack of hangover.
In the corner the flaccid dark tossed
on the coat tree is the Grand
Inquisitor. So, as I was saying,
the light's so motey it's almost solid—
sliced up by the Venetians,
it drops, in chunks, on the threadbare
carpet, on the shoulders' slumped hillocks.
Outside the glittering enfilade of days
and nights sweeps down the protracted
polish of the month, women slimly gowned
recline upon the dewy landscape of the chaise
nibbling at books of sonnets. So says this
flat room with its scab of carpet, blank window,
slack bed spring, bottle of Four Roses.
The world's effete, the text of poets,
vivid apparitions in slim pamphlets,
catalogues of words like pennycress,
peasants with simple lives and small
vocabularies who never make it
to irony. There are no flowers
in this world, just the Common
Bellhop, the Corpse and Robbers,
the scrawny text of the chenille
spread, this room, that lint.