QWERTY
by Bill Winter
My evoked imagination
reads you in your poem, sitting
on a park bench or
some back table in a restaurant
as your fingers gently flick
over the dark garden of keys.
The rapid and unsteady clicks
sound like a light rain
or birds foraging for seed
and never have I so wanted
my name spelled with everything,
including Enter and PgDn.
SYNAESTHESIA
by Bill Winter
Somehow it smells smoky to me—
Lauren Bacall and cigarettes
in the rain on the back lot at Warners
waiting for her shot to be ready.
It paces, thin arms crossed
under young and perfect breasts,
and I follow it around like Tom,
drunk on catnip or Arpège
or the whisk of silked thigh on thigh
or skin so soft to sting
my hungry fingertips.
But all these senses lie, lost
in the desert of my need,
for it is only your voice and a poem.
Just a poem, read to me. |
WITH AN ACQUANTANCE, A MATHEMATICS PROFESSOR,
SITTING ON THE VERANDA
OF HIS APARTMENT
by Bill Winter
I was nervous, so I said, Tell me about
the Poisson distribution. He smiled
and began to talk in the flat, exact voice
of a dictionary—hands fluttering
as he wrote out symbols on the chalkboard
in his mind. I was lost after he said
Consider... which was his first word,
so when he paused I said, Or maybe
a poem. After a moment, he cleared
his throat and recited a short one, by
Li Po, I think, and then was silent.
I looked out at the robin’s egg blue
of the apartment swimming pool, where
madrona leaves floated on the water,
and while I did not understand the poem,
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Magnolia