The Mechanics Dining at Backstreet Grill

Samn Stockwell

Yes, I guess I could measure my wealth
in the times when I haven’t been bored,
my body leaning as if I was confused
laundry on a windy day – bellows inside and out
my poor buffeted brain
but awake, rejoined.
If I had wealth, this would have to be it.
 
Daniel said we were flung high
but was interrupted, a burp abruptly
by an outsider and not so bright
more like the dim in a broom closet.
 
It made me feel better about my failures, I murmured oatily
to Alec and I chewed on a cigar
with my bourbon as though I was mighty.
I’m not complaining, but I’m not
although I wanted
before I was my mother’s,
a hand on my brow signifying greatness;
the emollient bestowing a secret mark
and ever after a cake without compare.
 
But we are sticks
tossed by the unmoved mover.
Non-returnables.
By flung high, he meant,
in all soberness, that we end
in interesting places, some twig of a branch
scratching at the river.

Genre: 
Author Bio: 

Samn Stockwell has published in Agni, Ploughshares, and the New Yorker, among others. Her two books, Theater of Animals and Recital, won the National Poetry Series and the Editor’s Prize at Elixir, respectively. Recent poems are in Poet-Lore, The Literary Review, and forthcoming in Gargoyle, Plume, and others.

Issue: 
62