Maybe
This is a Way for People to Fall in Love with Each Other
You carried a bag
of ice on to the morning pavement, and flirted with the young girl
in the maroon jacket
who cleared the breakfast tables. None of these things are true
except the breakfast
tables, the maroon jacket, the bag of ice. The young girl. You,
maybe. All the rest
of it, the verbs — these were arranged for you by a series
of framing devices:
the window, the park railings, the need for anything to make
sense. How was it,
to have become a victim of these random circumstances?
Did you feel nothing?
A weight in your shoulder, cold whispering against your thigh
and your shoes flat
on the pavement. These things are certain. The girl’s voice.
Why not talk about
the bag of ice, then? The way meaning slides from it, clumsy
as light. How it will
scatter itself across the day, slowly, as objects arrange themselves
in free-fall. How
it carried an inner glow, stood out from the city’s background hum
which was more than
could be said for the other visible objects. To be used
in drinks, for drinking.
Later, to get drunk. A hundred people drunk, imagine them!
Grinding on like the
sea. Making a big rude noise about the way things are in life.
Matt Bright
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