Altered After Too Many Years Under the Mask
By CAConrad
I feel you
judging me for
becoming agoraphobic
in someone else’s house
I forget how I learned to stroll through
grocery stores as though there is no crisis
my elbow cannot touch the middle of my back
my fingers though have found every part of me
soon no migration of wild animals will
be unknown to humans we will chart
film record publish archive everything
it gives us something to do while we
annihilate beauty poets shoveling
a quarry that is really an ongoing
crime scene investigation
a study in vomit imitating
vast chronicles of the face
whatever world we can hold
we will never agree our
neglect was worth it
whatever amount of
crazy we can imagine
coming at us double it
I found the perfect
listening chair nothing
but listeners who sit
I am sitting in it now
listening to my friend
the photographer
whose self-portrait
I find reflected
in eyes
of her
every
photo
Source: Poetry (January 2020)