Narrows
And then comes the morning when it dawns on you
the sun is not going to rise any more than you will
above yourself; when, in the midst of the mist,
blinkers have crept up the sides of your
cheeks, corridors have closed in like
garbage-tip walls, doors have
disappeared, and the past
repeats ad nauseum,
hissing from the
gutters like
steam.
You’ve awoken to dead-ends stacked up, like bodies en bloc, no
exit signs, no wrong way turn back, where gambler’s
luck is never looking up, and if you’re honest
no one’s sure what you mean, where self-
abandonment is out of vogue, tunnel-
vision is the new black, clouds
have descended so low that
even the supermarkets
are dark and everyone
is looking for some
way out, any way
out, not a mirror,
anything but
mirrors, just
a window
— open
to let
the
rain
in.
(published by Otoliths, 2010, while a previous version of
this poem was published in Literature and Aesthetics, 2005)