POETRY BY CLAUDIA GRINNELL
REGARDING PERSPECTIVE
Depending on where you
stand
you see a woman with a small dog,
a red leather boot, the heel of the boot,
or the dirt on the boot.
My freshly-washed blue dress
hangs in the window, obscures
the garbage cans, the dead
Sunday street. Forgotten ones
dangle from ropes, a portrait
of useless feet.
Now would be the time,
I write,
to invent a more beautiful
handwriting, round strokes
with arching domes--a beautiful
script to describe people
more beautiful than we are.
I am the one writing
and you are the one who reads.
The hand leads you
to an unknown wide field
where every word is a lie
and then again not.
If you had come, you'd have asked,
What do you do?
Perhaps I'd have walked
away,
turned, explained,
I am writing a poem.
A poem in which people leave
and paper stays
and curls against your fingers
like an old polaroid.
You took a picture that
day,
but never showed it to me,
I didn't ask. Perhaps
I wasn't as beautiful
as I had hoped in front
of the mirror or you had imagined
at home. Our kisses slipped
off our lips. You talked
of one-family houses, two children,
one wife, half-joking, like a soap
bubble you tried to tack
to your skin. I laughed,
was astonished, didn't dare to speak,
although in the silence
there was talk of me.
Depending on where I look
I see trees, patient like Job,
unable to leave.
Regarding Perspective is Claudia
Grinnell's first contribution
to Blue Moon.
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