First date by Callie Siskel - The New Criterion

Poems

February 2010

First date

by Callie Siskel

Burke

was right!

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How could I forget
that hour in the corner,
behind the pool table,

under the cues?
The chairs were just there,
brown leather, waiting

against a wood wall
where pairs of names
were firmly etched.

The players kept reaching
over our heads—
I don’t remember what you said,

or I said, just the scene,
the way we were tucked in
and when a player leaned,

another layer. Does this seem
like a stretch,
that our minds incline

toward moments
that are self-contained?
The heart holds out

its kerosene lamp in vain,
digging is an art
of the brain—

seduced by hard-to-reach
places, the spaces
themselves.

We lasted on and off
for a year.
You whispered things

I can no longer hear.
The dark recessed
corner, the encroaching

figures are now embossed:
the shapes last
when the feeling is lost.

Callie Siskel is a former associate editor of The New Criterion.

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