Throat, poems by S. Stephanie, 2001

After Dinner with Friends at the Rosa (for Peter Kidd)

Not much traffic downtown tonight, the streets
seem to be unconsciously waiting
for something to happen or weather
to act out. Between the darkening
of bricks and amber angles of street lights
a book displayed in a shop window
with a half-sunken ship on its cover
looks tired of holding the other half up.
The conversation we’ve been having trails off
as the last bus for Boston leaves the square
without a passenger on it. And it occurs
to me that we’ve been talking for some time
about the soul as though we could see it,
as though we could take it out and stand it up.
Everyone has a different perspective.
My friend, a landscaper from the country
sees his soul as walking the world alone
and he enjoys the solitude of it;
his soul the size of a bear scruffing
about its business, coming into its own
perfection amid the primrose
and staghorn sumac. I envy him,
his muscular vision, the stubborn heart
it takes to live it. Perhaps I’ve been
in town too long. When I think of my soul
it suddenly looks so American . . .
The Rosa, scrawled in red neon could be
a sign painted by Hopper. And we could be
any one of those starkish people
casting inward glances. Wherever
our eyes fall, horizons could end in edges

—(Excerpted from Throat, S. Stephanie. Igneus Press (2001))