Pratik : PRATIK POETRY SPECIAL : GUEST EDITOR TONY BARNSTONE POEM IN THE SPECIAL LA ISSUE RELEASED YESTERDAY

Wednesday, July 28, 2021

PRATIK POETRY SPECIAL : GUEST EDITOR TONY BARNSTONE POEM IN THE SPECIAL LA ISSUE RELEASED YESTERDAY

TONY BARNSTONE

A California Couple

She has bags of peaches, yellow, unbruised.

As he comes up behind I look away,

don’t say hi as they pass. I can’t get used

to the ripe crushed fruit of her face,

and wonder who singed her lip

into a sneer of scar tissue,

who put that red hand on her cheek

and caged her up with Mike,

who’s just as fast to slap her in the face

as pat her ass when he goes out.

As they step into the rooming house

I see him pet her head, give it a little shove.

The next morning, I jump when something

is thrown against the wall so hard

the ceiling cracks and a wisp of plaster drops.

In my room, next life over,

I am judging the relative weights

of a woman’s body and a toaster oven

and wondering if I should call the cops

from the payphone at the Shell station on the corner.

I wonder if she hates me for what I hear.

I grab the paper, fix my breakfast.

Eggs are fat eyes that won’t stop watching me.

I stab one with a fork

and watch it bleed into the toast.

Tony Barnstone is Professor of English and Environmental Studies at Whittier College and has published 21 books and a music CD. His poetry books include Pulp Sonnets; Beast in the Apartment; Tongue of War: From Pearl Harbor to Nagasaki; The Golem of Los Angeles; Sad Jazz; and Impure. Among his awards: The Poets Prize, Grand Prize of the Strokestown International Poetry Contest, Pushcart Prize, John Ciardi Prize, Benjamin Saltman Award, and fellowships from the NEA, the NEH, and the California Arts Council. In November he will publish a co-translation of the Urdu poet Ghalib (White Pine Press), and a creativity tool, The Radiant Tarot: Pathway to Creativity (Wiser Press).