Precious Little Mystery
I'm partnered with Leroux.
Bad clam, he's locked himself
behind his frosted pain. My job
is to stand in the kitchenette,
boil and peel eggs when he can't sleep.
"None of this will bring her back",
is all I say, but I hit my cue.
His carpet's like dry skin.
Despite everything, I do not love him
nor the theories that raise themselves
then cancel themselves out;
the plots that revolve around him
in increasingly vague circles.
He'll damn the grey sky
of morality before long,
and I'll act surprised
and concerned about his drinking
and the Venus flytrap on the widowsill.
The sleek, outmoded telephone
doesn't ring without demands.
The past sounds like a woman
laughing somewhere back East.
She's getting the joke
five years, ten years too late.
Dane Holt’s poems have been published in Poetry Ireland Review, The Tangerine, The White Review, and HU.
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