Your hand can really wrap around a cup and tighten.
Be thankful it's not your throat.
Long after you've drunk its contents,
you feel for insight in its smooth china surface,
beyond its current shape back to manufacture,
prototype, planning, even its ingredients
deep in the earth.
When the skin below your eye is bruised,
you're out to feel the hurt in everything.
How willing is the coffee cup to be here,
its steaming liquid to be drunk,
its small bowed handle to be threaded
by a shaking finger.
"Want another?" I ask, knowing you'd
rather sip than talk just now.
And you've no wish to ask,
"Why do I have such lousy luck with men?"
More coffee steams between the lips
so they won't say these words.
And you grip the cup more like a vise than ever.
Hold hard enough, you hold together.
What doesn't drop can't shatter.
-
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in New World Writing, North Dakota Quarterly and Lost Pilots. Latest books, Between Two Fires, Covert and Memory Outside The Head are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in California Quarterly, Birmingham Arts Journal, La Presa and Shot Glass Journal.
