The Underside
Editor’s Note: This poem by Ben Berman is being presented as part of our special focus on poetry during #PoetryMonth in April. Please read our introduction to the series.
My friend tells me how his wife cheated—
well, not cheated, but sent racy photos
of herself to other men—how she created
some online profile with a phony
name, Lady Falcon, and how he stumbled
upon this one day when he used her phone
to order pizza. They’d been so stable,
he tells me, maybe they needed this breach
to save their marriage from growing stale.
In front of us a hawk is perched on a branch,
calmly pecking at a squirrel’s entrails.
We’re sitting side-by-side on the bench
but see different things through the tangled
crosscutting of limbs in front of us. My friend
mentions that he’ll hide some of the details
from his analyst because the man can find
subtext even when they chat about sports,
which makes me feel bad about my own feigned
attention, how my mind spirals and spurts
like a squirrel getting chased up a tree,
then scrambles to piece together the excerpts—
it’s just that I’m tired of the puppetry…
my friend says…some childhood desire…
he adds…while residing on my property…
But what an impotent word—reside—
no wonder why his wife sent all those nude
pictures to random men. On the underside
of the branch, now, directly under
the hawk is another squirrel, his floppy
tail pointed stiff. This must be duende,
I think, ready to spring at the slightest flap
of a wing. How should I have reacted?
my friend asks, as the squirrel fixes to flip.
Include: From Figuring in the Figure © Ben Berman, 2017. Used by permission of Able Muse Press.
Foreword Reviews
