But when I hear the pink fingers trailing
across the silverware inside the drawer
for the silverware, tracing concentric
fingerprints pressed by my fingers
into metal pressed into the shape
of a spoon, a knife, a fork. The sound is
soft, barely heard, and I eagerly press
my ear to the drawer pouring more
of the rosy-fingered-soft-tapping into me,
to drown my ear canals in the sound
of that touch: small hands of rats playing,
gently, across my cutlery. It’s enough
to grow jealous of the spoons, knives, and forks
brandishing intimacy with the sound.
How close they are, like the drum struck
by the mallet, the horn the wind flies through,
the virtue of proximity and the thrill of touch.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 25, Issue 4.
Shaun Holloway has an MFA from George Mason University where he taught Literature and Composition. His poems have been published in Miracle Monocle, Slipstream, as well as other journals.
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