fishing

to Mike Foley

I am trying to slip sidewise
into this unwritten poem,
I am a sliver of a person
lodged in the palm of the bar,
surrounded by fidgeting fingers,
loquacious drunks, befuddled by
the intensity of the guy adjacent -
a man who provokes conversation
so that he can use the word "I"
as much as possible,
as though that ninth letter
at some indiscernible point in the past
became totemic,
and I keep slipping obliquely,
jarred by this man's insistent,
repeating narrative of
a missing tooth -
and they say when (within a dream)
a tooth goes missing
it means you're afraid of abandonment,
as though a part of you
has mysteriously & without reason,
politely & bloodlessly,
seceded overnight -
just like this damned poem,
a silvery flash under dark waters
(and me without a creel or even
a serviceable line, pun intended)
all I have is this wriggling worm,
too fleshy and insistent,
desperate not to be used,
so alien against
the iridescence of my palm -