Pictures by Bruegel
What did I come in here for?
Post-its to mark the
incoherent text I discovered
on pp. 79 and 80
while craving cheese not just tuna
and committed to completing
the sentence “I like to be entered by . . .”
pandering music that refreshes;
the front door, thank you;
light like a small glass of water.
Almost listening to music on a loop.
Misleading solo cello that
stretches out in the room
like heavy embroidered drapes
dismantled and splayed on the floor
then a capella liturgy voices
preternaturally high wandering in
an electronically enhanced space,
leaping over each other
before completing melody lines
so it’s like a ladder on shaky ground
but edifying.
Then the music is disrupted
by hunger for the German
paté in the refrigerator,
washed down with that
small glass of water and the light.
Then your pictures by Bruegel
remind me that I gather,
prepare, and disperse goods,
walk through empty lots
looking down for bear berries,
and sometimes forget my body
dancing in its own watery space.
PETER BUSHYEAGER is the author of In the Green Oval, Citadel Luncheonette, and other poetry collections. His poems have appeared in New American Writing, Local Knowledge, Sensitive Skin, Live Mag!, Global Poemic, the Autonomedia anthology From Somewhere to Nowhere, and the anthology An Embroidery of Voices. New work is forthcoming in the next issue of New American Writing. He is the editor of Wake Me When It’s Over: The Selected Poems of Bill Kushner (Talisman House) and his reviews and commentary have appeared in Rain Taxi, Talisman, Gathering of the Tribes, and other publications.