There’s a woman in the front row
who has started to cough.
I spent seven wretched hours
on a rancid bus to get here,
to read poetry in this bookshop,
in front of fifty-six people
and now one of them
is coughing up a squall,
doing a fabulous seal imitation,
lacking only flippers
and an inflatable ball.
The store had laid out padded chairs
and a table full of books –
mine and those of a trio of poets
who’d read before my turn had come:
in feather-dropping silence,
in monastic quietude,
in that attentive hush that happens
when the audience is rapt in words.
I raise my voice in hopes of drowning
the woman’s incessant hacks,
bellowing there’s truth in affirmation
and in eyes that see past stars!
And my pacing is off,
my inflection is chaotic,
my ability to focus
easily thwarted
by gurgling phlegm.
I want to stop abruptly –
ask her what her problem is,
if she’s a smoker who’s never quit,
if she waited for me to begin my set
before unleashing her pent-up noise.
But I forge on in a smouldering stride,
thankful I’ve saved
my favourite poem
for the climactic dénouement,
grateful she’s just left her seat
and gone off to the back of the shop,
where, if I’d been more observant,
I would have noticed the coffee bar,
the gleam
of frothing machines,
figured she’d forego
the Buckley’s,
embrace the whirr
that cappuccinos bring.
Andreas Gripp
RF Image