02 November 2010

Page-Turner (Can One Trust the Narrator?)

For day one of the November PAD challenge. A poem re: turning the page on past events.


leather spined, she turns the
first, blank page, to see the
frontispiece, in short inky strokes,
obscured, so slightly, by paper tissue-
thin, the uppermost corner
wrinkled as if the last reader
closed the volume with an
impatient (or hasty) hand

endpapers, printed in peacock
colors, the whorls of red, blue,
green merging into a whole as
rich as plum pudding

turning the page, forgoing the
inevitable dedication (not to
her, certainly) musing over the
cryptic capitals punctuated by
oh-so-definite periods

chapter one was romance, the
treacle thick on the fingers,
licked off, delicious it was, so
sweet

no eye for foreshadowing, the
page missing from the index
vexing her, and can one,
really, ever trust the
narrator?

no. and so--she turns the
cream colored sheets, looking for
some legend she will understand,
oil black, that
she can trace over. but. no.

placed back upon the shelf at the
last and left to the whims
of the removal men

No comments: