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Words Always Fail Me
By Jaclyn Porfi lio
“It’s the words that are supposed to do the dancing,”
he once told me.
And I pictured my rhythmic gymnasts
tangling themselves in ribbon as I talked,
planting batons in all the wrong places.
“You’re not the one who should be doing the work.”
And I saw my little soldiers,
holding tails and marching,
caught in a dynamic form of attention.
His army was stronger.
Th ey had cannons in their back pockets
and a battle cry I couldn’t pin down.
“No one needs to know you if they know your words.”
And I watched our executives crowd a conference room,
point at charts they didn’t create,
chuckle at jokes no one understood,
and refuse handshakes I willed them to embrace.
“Just write. Give yourself to the language.”
And I witnessed his security guards
knock mine into the hydrangeas,
back him out of our house, my house,
down to the street and the waiting car,
aft er dripping black ink on my doorstep.
magus ~ 50 ~ mabus