Men at Work

A poem from two perspectives.

Elliot:

 

My sister was notoriously minimalist.

She had 7 outfits and washed them every week.

The walls of her room were entirely bare.

 

Being three years older than me,

And possessing a careless type of beauty,

She was always the one our parents worried about.

 

I had 27 outfits, however,

And given the transient property

That laundry had in our home,

We always ended up switching small articles of clothing

Whether we liked it or not.

 

I was 16 when she went on a date with a boy named Evan.

He talked as little as she did,

But not in her contemplative, indecisive way,

In a guarded way.

And his pupils were always huge,

Displaying his role in the amphetamine game.

She never came home.

 

I thought I had lost all of her after several months.

I began to be uncertain about her face,

Which was absent from all photo albums and yearbooks.

I grew a hatred for men and stopped dating seriously.

I was alone.

But I did find one remnant of her

Crumpled in the back of my closet:

 

A pair of thin neon-orange underwear,

The color suggestive of a road-sign

Warning of construction up ahead.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Emery:

 

When I asked why you always wore those panties to bed,

Instead of sleeping naked,

You said you heard when you were younger

That spiders like small warm places,

So you thought you’d erect a barrier

To keep them from crawling up into you.

 

I thought it was the most bizarre thing I’d ever heard.

 

But it made me think of what I’d said to you once:

That I didn’t like your fingers touching me

In the center of my chest where the scar is.

 

Before the surgery,

My ribs grew outward much further

In a deformed way.

The doctors warned of how my organs being displaced

Would cause several problems with the pumping of my blood,

And suggested reconstruction.

 

But even now, Elliot,

With my bones set backward

To a more reasonable place,

My brain still thinks of my chest as protruding.

And when you rest your hand there,

I can feel you inside my heart,

 

Where it used to be,

 

And it’s too invasive.

 

 

 

 

 

Reviews

[A Glow in the Pit of My..]

Really very intriguing... Makes me want to know more! I love that all of the names begin with 'E' and the air of mystery wafting throughout each and every word.