A Perfect Little Fiefdom

It surely wouldn’t have so peeved
the man if someone hadn’t burped
just at the dénouement – just as
he had marshaled nearly all his
massively interior resources into voice:
a plummy transmutation of the vaguer,

darker chambers of the heart into
an intellectually ripe, defensibly
configured tight compartment that
rejoiced in its felicities of wise, right
choice. He wouldn’t quite so much
have minded if precisely at the moment

that he reached his exegetic coda’s
dawn, he hadn’t heard that groaning
yawn – and if when he had gathered
up his delicacies of apportioned
meaning, touched with metaphoric
scent so subtle one had had to strive

to something like the live condition
of a prayer to dare to fathom
what exactly he had meant, there
hadn’t been distinct regurgitative
noises in the back, uncivilly intended
to distract. A perfect little fiefdom is

what he had lacked, and sought,
and fought to build with his alluring
whispered words – aligned and shined
and burnished on his finest, highest
mental shelf. Odd, the audience one
had to wrangle with within oneself.


.