|
Sitting 'round the table in their dark brown and gray shapeless sweaters
Yapping about what they cooked for dinner last night
Yammering about somebody's' sister and her husband
Yakking about the new divorcee and who she might be sleeping with,
The skinny one across the table peering into my lunchbox
Asking pointedly "Is that chicken?"
As though all food is her personal dominion.
This small-talk strains me to the point of implosion;
My teeth are gnashing, grinding hard
Making my face ache
The weight of polite conversation squashing me, crushing me
I want to scream at them
"PEOPLE ARE SUFFERING AND DYING AND CONTENDING WITH GREAT TRADGEDIES, STRUGGLING TO FIND THE STRENGTH TO DEAL WITH GROSSEST ADVERSITY GRACEFULLY
AND ALL YOU ARE WORRIED ABOUT IS
"Is that chicken ??"
Their mouths open and shut and sound comes out
But it is atonic cacophony
Dissonant and hurtful to my ears.
I am hungry
But not for lunch
For Meaning and Beauty and Thinking and Doing
Menopausal bitches whose brains have atrophied from disuse
Cause me to want to say purposely horrific things to shock them out of their
Quasi-comatose complacency,
Show them there is infinitely more to the world
Than their parochial little circle.
Perhaps I am being lofty, you may say…
Perhaps I pretend at a cerebral elevation
I do not possess, you may think…
Or perhaps you would even say I am just
Being bitchy;
But if you sat with them
The despair would silence you
Squeeze your heart
Make you consider doing and saying anything
That might stir awareness
Of something beyond
How fat their thighs are.
I sit there, too much a coward to say out loud what is agitating like a Maytag
In my head,
Wishing they could hear me thinking.
Small talk
Disgusts me
Because it is so very small.
Through no choice of my own,
My plate is too full of
Much weightier fare.
|
|
