Shard








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.
 


 

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