Uninvited Reader

She notes in the poem she's reading where the disembodied

voice speaking encounters "an ugly old woman"

just momentarily, in part of a single line, in one

of the many long corridors and sharp turnings of the poem,

so that she's quickly lost to view. That's me, she thinks,

I'm an ugly old woman, I who sit here reading this poem

and its ugly old woman phrase and the poet, when he stumbled

over her splayed, swollen legs, registered her presence,

her inheritance, her baggage of limitations-ugly, old,

woman-but never knew, couldn't, because who could

know, who can stop and know her ... And this reader keeps

thinking, loving, understanding, trapped in her eye

following the voice on and on while somewhere back in the poem

in a blank passage an ugly old woman sits against a wall.

Source: Conflicting Desire (Ekstasis Editions, 2000)