Michael Steven


Kitchen


A broken phone confused the weather,
drawing our names from an old magazine.
A kiss for a pound. A container, slightly open.
Your emptied gaze, theories I measure up.

As if unsolicited, the evening floated in
and around us through the floor.
You preferred the bench. We made a star.
We let the dishes gamble in the sink.

Like whispers on a train, the song ended,
scattering its bluer parts over the rooftops.
We were anxious, and so we said nothing.
A question tethered in a nest of intentions.

Back on the street, we pulled polite faces,
the footpath rose up to meet your new shoes.
Love had become a room, only stranger —
our hungry shadow no longer tricked the walls.



Michael Steven is the author of the chapbook Homage To Robert Creeley. He runs Soapbox Press, and works part-time in a bookstore. Lives in Auckland, New Zealand.


 
 
 
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