Supper at The Regal

Letting the wash-loads run themselves

There's wash to be dried and hung —
a morning to pack
/ and an afternoon ahead for driving.
But only Thursday
now     — and while the wash-barrel spins —
empties and fills
and spins     — I'm sitting to eat
and sip
and seem not to be listening     — to these girls
pretending smart
/ these lawyers-to-be and journeymen —
their muscles and minds
made light     — to speak of the power
and say
what power will of body parts     — showing
their own degrees
of envy and exciting     — because
there's delight
or there's forgetting in the telling     — after
so many fields baled
/ so many houseplants and cravats —
so many lines of steel     — fit
and covered by concrete half a century —
told in this plain-tongued
lingo     / practiced to trade
and compromise.


*


And so many stitches     / tugs     — testing
their hold on time.
So many songs their older brothers
made some points of —
studio cuts kids made     — before
the kids imagined albums —
conceived of years
as stints in DMZs
or Julliard.



*



No wonder we sort     / step up     / step
out through interludes —
trusting these Thursdays now —
these suppers     — if asked —
we'd say we never would have chosen —
but lightened so much
by not-so-old-men and their lyrics.  And
now that the burger
/ the second buck-night longneck's
fully down —
I'm less to this airy comedy     — thinking
of the rooms
where ghosts and gentlemen retire —
having no wives to count
/ or too many wives to count on    — rooms
where the women
dream     — remembering themselves
more sanguine
and ecstatic prodigies     — more human
gods maybe     — whoever
it was that noticed first     — had
sighed like that
before deciding to apprentice     — taken
due care
as vacuums formed     — and
chalky pagentries of absence
nights turned murderous
and worse.

 

© Appetite (2)