The Reading

by W.S. DiPiero

After the fluttered knocks on the near green door,
the room fills with their various lights and flesh.

I know (through smoked glass, or gels) most of the faces.
Harry Grabenstein, my oldest friend, ushers them in.

In blue lamplight, my first girlfriend touches the nipple
moist under her blouse. Farther around the jagged circle

my father sits, scrubbing one hand with the other,
reading, or waiting for, some new message there;

he chokes as usual on the brink of speech,
torturing his flesh instead, while my sister,

grown older than he, custodial, painfully kind,
fails to heal him with her gaze and touch.

Toward the back I see a runt version of myself,
stubbing a cigarette in my palm. And cousin Tom,

in the studded leather jacket, gleaming punk silk,
dear Tom grins and tries not to spit on the rug.

In the unbodied loop and sway of breasts and arms
the faceless woman of my familiar dream is there,

lifting to my mouth the cool wooden bowl of milk.
To touch her, my hand must pass clean through.

She'll remind me, and I'll need to hear it said,
that the pilgrims who are or will be in this room

have come to listen, that I had better start soon,
before it gets late and everyone decides to leave.

W.S. DiPiero will be reading with August Kleinzahler on November , at 7:30 pm in Bartos Theatre in the Wiesner Building, 20 Ames Street, Cambridge. For further information call 253-9469.

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