Shard
I stepped on a shard bare-footed
in the kitchen
where we had argued last
likely from that glass
I dropped on the way to the sink
a few weeks ago
you can hardly see it
a small cut
hard nugget inside
lodged in the inner toe mound
I might have missed it
if it didn’t hurt so much
when I walked the wrong way
And in the kitchen
when I daydream the wrong way
you appear
or rather
that mere sliver of yourself
appears
lodged so firmly
unnoticed
most of the time
But in time
these pains will pass
either a callus will form
so hard and wide
that it will cover the shard
until it is entombed
without threat of resurrection
or the cut will swell
balloon like a blister
burn me tight
until one day
it will explode pus and blood
washing the sliver away
Albert Katz
Albert Katz has been a professor of cognitive psychology for over 40 years and is now on the cusp of retiring. In his undergraduate days he had aspirations to be a poet, gave readings in coffee houses and published some poems in long defunct small literary journals. He found it increasingly harder to write poetry once he started graduate work and through most of his academic, career, publishing extensively instead in scientific journals. He has been married (and divorced) twice, has three children, two of whom have published themselves. As retirement started to loom, he found that his poetic voice started to reappear, after almost 50 years dormant. Over the last two years he has published (or have poems accepted for publication) in Poetry Quarterly, Three Line Poetry, Inman Indiana and, most recently, Pangolin Review. He has had one poe published previously in Ariel Chart.
Tags:
Poetry