Print This PostIt was late in the smoke-painted bar, a quarter past the blue hour, when The Interviewer pulled The Poet into an even darker room. And in the dark of that darkness, came the first question. Tell me, said the Interviewer, where do your poems live?
You’re asking so you must have them and have them alive in the hand you hope will one day hold me.
The dark room was the color of closed eyelids now. Music reached in through a window deprived of its pane. With his eyes on the music, The Interviewer asked What was the last sin your poems committed?
My friend, my friend, I was born
to a father who didn’t want what I am. I am
doing reference work in sin, and born
to fuck married men with no shame in
confessing it. This is what poems are:
willing to burn in public
with mercy
and liberty and justice for not but
for the greedy,
and the six other sinners who say
they are the tongue’s wrangle,
the hair follicle,
the world’s pottage, the rat’s star
playing the chitlin circuit I call home.
A blade of moonlight cut The Poet’s body in half. The Interview liked this. The Interviewer wondered which half wanted most to be taken. Drinks appeared at the table without explanation. I want to know, said The Interviewer, pausing to take a sip of his drink,what your poems dream about?
They dream they are dreaming, and in that dream they never have to wake again.
Minutes were hours in that shut eyelid-colored room. The moon turned into the sun without apology. Music that had been reaching through the window pulled its hand away. The Interview looked less himself. Tell me, please tell me, what have your poems come here to do?
No big thing really—jus wanna fuk wit yr I’s til u c yrslf well enuf to admit that u 1 evil bitch.
- In a Dark Room: Tom Hunley
- In a Dark Room: Jeannine Gailey
- In a Dark Room: Jon Sands
- In a Dark Room: Jericho Brown
