through rooms where dust is a deepening skin

I’m learning to read poetry by typing it in so I notice every word just a bit more. I read too fast for poems. Maybe I type too fast for them, also, but typing, at least is slower.

GETTING THROUGH

Like a car stuck in gear,

a chicken too stupid to tell

its head is gone,

or sound ratcheting on

long after the film

has jumped the reel,

or a phone

ringing and ringing

in the house

they have all moved away from,

through rooms where dust

is a deepening skin,

and the locks unneeded,

so I go on loving you,

my heart blundering on,

a muscle spilling out

what is no longer wanted

and my words hurtling past,

like a train off its track,

toward a boarded-up station,

closed for years,

like some last speaker

of a beautiful language

no one else can hear

DEBORAH POPE

The Poetry Anthology, 1912-2002,

The Poetry Anthology, 1912-2002

1994-1995

p. 416