from the walls of a cubicle

"before i could read, i could pull a book of poetry off the bottom shelf,' she'd told me, and went on to write such awful odes, working in a call centre and paying half the rent. though the other half belonged to me i do not live there.

i watched the goosebumps crawl around me; bare legs in the rain. wind whips a cigarette and next door i hear her cough, heartily, before falling back asleep. the lights are still on.

outside a man asks patrons for spare change. i shout him a beer. the nameless and the incomplete are no more crazy than the average fucker out there on the street, but who's he - and who are we - to know that now? he leaves but the space of conversation remaines, not in free verse but without grammar or metre or ryhme. though she will always carve meaning, sometimes, it must be said, words mean nothing. there is no noise to fill the silence.

last summer on that same veranda she explained to me the visuality of good poetry, and in the dust on the window drew a wonky silhouette.
"this," she said pointing, "is a poem, and it draws the author's face."