He stares at nothing while he waits for another cup
of coffee—the waitress has no idea
he’s regretting an em dash in the first quatrain
of his most recent poem, the one about
the time he stood on a stool next to his mother,
his cheek touching the cool skin of her arm
as she deftly pulls flour into egg yolks, stirs
with her fingers and kneads the dough
then rolls it through the press—parchment thin—
and how it glows when she holds it up to the window
where the red bougainvillea sway—in nearly the same
manner he walked through the doorway today
faltering, the moment he remembered
how that same shade of red
had matched the color
of his small shoes—and her lips.
———
“The Poet,” by Gwendolyn Soper. After Lily Prigioniero’s painting by the same title.
Source: The Ekphrastic Review, August 2021
Gwendolyn Soper 