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Famous Reporter 41
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GEOFF LEMON
Coffee
- Thursday.
One day after
- the most
hopeful day
- in the
history of presidents
- and I
still feel
- that
whether I shoot myself or not
- might come
down to a spilled coffee
- or a
parking space.
-
- Thursday.
And the space between evenings
- and
mornings is dead air.
- Mornings
collapse into afternoons,
- afternoons
bring me drinks
- in
anything that’s clean
-
- until the
sun sets
- and my
eyes
- can’t
pick up light anymore.
- The hard
truth of you,
- a curled
fist slipped into my ribs
- and left
clenching.
-
- Three days
without words,
- touch
remains out of reach
- and there
is no stepladder down from this.
- There is
no hardhat or handrail
- and the
safety inspectors are long since dead
- from
misfortunes of their own.
-
- Saturday
is unsure of itself, and overcompensates.
- Sunday is
trying to be quietly sick without us noticing.
- Monday
never called, or wrote,
- or chipped
in for the cab.
-
- And by
Tuesday,
- with heat
bringing everything inside us
- to the
surface of our skins,
- there’s
the hope in my dilated veins
- that the
faintest touch of my elbow to yours
- across a
table for a few unnoticed seconds
- will be
enough to see me through the night.
Geoff Lemon is former poetry editor of harvest
and Voiceworks, and founder of Wordplay Collective. A six-time slam winner, he’s
published in Best Australian Stories, HEAT, Blue Dog, Island, and Going Down
Swinging, and also writes music journalism for MTV and Beat.
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