Two Poems by Dale Laszig

 

Watching You Go

Strange feeling,
watching you leave this morning
in last night's clothes,
slightly wrinkled but radiant.
The familiar crash of the screen door
that says I'll be right back --
just running out to check
on my life --
the car motor confidently
threading into traffic,
the bare feet on the kitchen floor
that feel you pull away.
 

Eating

She's too modern to be lonely
so she eats.
It's a process, not a pastime,
a journey that begins when
everything else ends.
No more day to bluff through,
no more calls to return.
Just the patient refrigerator
saying, hey baby.

Alone in that nowhere
between kitchen and bedroom
with no arms to romance her mass
and give it form, other than her own.

Having exhausted the inventory
of shapes called womanly,
she turns now
to the big door in the dark,
her numb face bathed in soft electric light.

Both poems are from the chapbook
                   Dances & Lies
  Copyright © Dale Laszig 2001