Private Booth
- Private Booth
It’s disturbing to recallthe child’s analogy of adult desire:
how you were certain to bein parlor view
of your grandmother’s cuckooclock moments before the hour.
That’s the suggestive silenceof all the engines at rest,
every toggle switchin the off position,
the warehouseof robotic arms recumbent.
If you’ve a mind for irony,think of it as any dovecote,
the drowse insideas thick as feathers,
the brooding of the cubbieslike the winter-muffle of an empty cauldron.
All that changeswith the final chink
of two dollarsin widely circulated coins. [End Page 128]
The deliciousness of that silenceset to brass lights,
then trance musicpicking up a slow grind,
hackles stirringbeyond smoked glass.
A body, choreographed,ruffles its feathers,
sets the fittings taut beforestepping into the time allotted. [End Page 129]
Benjamin Landry is the author of Particle and Wave and is a research associate in creative writing at Oberlin College. His poetry and reviews have appeared in Denver Quarterly, Guernica, the Kenyon Review Online, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Poetry Daily, and elsewhere. He blogs and reviews at benjaminlandry.wordpress.com.
