National Poetry Month Day 2: “At the Book Shrink” by Brenda Shaughnessy
Welcome to The Rumpus’s National Poetry Month project. We’ll be running a new poem from a different poet each day for the month of April.
At the Book Shrink
one learns to say “my body uses me
as a grape uses wine–”
to talk about inevitability,
the essence of plot.
But what happens when a person
understands she is being sent
back, glass by glass,
to the invisible pouring stations
of the larger narrative?
That she is merely like or likely
a person in a book?
Like a salt water balloon
sinking in the ocean.
Like a person in a book, like
I said already. Someone’s
not listening. Someone’s
eating breakfast or falling
asleep or texting a married lover
as shrinks are wont to do.
If I am boring then at least
I am getting somewhere:
through the wood I knock on.
My story is telling.
But it’s not telling me.
I need help getting to the next part.
When I open my mouth,
liquid rushes in, endrunkening.
When I close it,
dark, secret-looking drops spill
crimson on the page.