Conversation


It begins at a table, certainly

flat, less so level,

with an even number of chairs,

some sturdier than others, all

equally uncomfortable.


Sweating glasses stand

in wet rings, or jigsaw

puzzle pieces lie

scattered across the surface,

or a roadmap spreads out

with coffee stains

blurring its legend.

Maybe the Sunday paper is drawn

and quartered amid

the remains of breakfast.


Personal histories converge in words,

old grievances, new grief,

yesterday’s events to replay

or file away, a dream retold

though barely remembered.


We disperse but keep returning,

sometimes sitting, sometimes not,

reporting what we’ve found,

though never lost, what everyone

knew all along, again and again.


Table of Contents


Preparing to Leave

Curriculum Vitae

My Teachers

Evening

Conversation

The Distances

Pivot

Voice Mail

On First Seeing My Granddaughter in Sonograms

Arriving

Homeless

Despair Parts

Lost

Newspaper Mulch

The Human Sloughs Its Skin More Subtly

Absorbed

Against Gravity

Exit Wounds

March First—A Marsh—First Mark

Accounting

Dying

Remains

Preparing to Leave

by Stephen Bunch

$15 US
Chapbook - 22 poemsChapbooks.html

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The Lives You Touch Publications

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