By Mikal Wix
Thank you for your time, I know
Is what I’m supposed to say
Because I feel how tough it is
To leave the room last after
Having just arrived,
So it’s au revoir instead, like the Bastille
In Paris, or the Gulag in Kolyma,
Just a few million moments more then
To rehearse prerecorded mimes
And relive sympathetic goodbyes
Hushed in soup ration lines,
And like the onion, each slice
Drives you deeper inside, or finds you
Fleeing the cutting board floor,
But the butcher’s glove helps
To avoid the cuts, and yet with a clock
Hanging over our heads
The dish concludes just the same
And with a sizzling burst of shame.
So warm regards to the machine,
The thing that came and went in forms
With such a clever advent,
Now flees the heavy white space
As if its pregnancy could ever be left out
Of the couvade custom of submission
To ritual purification
Through fasting and taboos of passion,
All the elements of lasting lament.
Mikal Wix grew up in the South. The place seeded insights into many outlooks, including visions of a revenant from the closet. He studies literature and anthropology and has recent work in Penumbra Literary Journal, Berkeley Poetry Review, Angel Rust Magazine, Tahoma Literary Review, Adelaide Literary Magazine, Hyacinth Review, & works as a science editor. You can find Mikal on Instagram and Twitter.
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