I whisper to something that shouts

By Glen Wilson

I whisper to something that shouts

and chase its awkwardness with bleach, 
before the mask it made us wear

muffles the curses I want to say,
opinions taste sodden on your chin, 

when you watch lovers say goodbye
through signal static, plexiglass and gauze.

I figure-eight the floors as people 
move around each other on chess squares

a dance un-choreographed, the scores are still 
coming through, the judges are shielding.

When I go home my family ask how it is
and it’s hard to lie and bottle the little traumas

in a sigh, at night I turn it up to eleven and sing 
alto in the choir of the scalding shower.

I remember a teacher in school
saying I’d never amount to anything

yet here I am wiping the algebra 
of disaster away tile by gleaming tile.

I try not to think of the last stories 
spoken on the floor as the fronds of my mop

move from bedside to bedside, genuflect
down every corridor, I pray more. I have to.

It keeps me returning here to winch up 
from the well, kindness for the unknown 

as it bends me like a bow that can’t go loose
and can’t yet sing. Soon, soon,

soon all the songs will break.

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Written Word ‘Hand’ poems