At Right Angles to the World
Sep 1st, 2009 | By William Doreski | Category: Poetry | 457 viewsNot quite like Buster Keaton
I stand at right angles to the world.
The meter-tester arrives to test
my electric meter, his pickup
rattling, coughing diesel smog.
He shakes my hand and we stand
at right angles, his shadow
crossing rather than paralleling
mine, his test instruments
shuddering as he plugs them in.
With a hand-held computer he learns
that his company has cheated me
for years. Nothing surprises me,
since almost but not quite like
Buster Keaton I’ve stood at right
angles to the world forever.
The meter-tester leaves. Indoors
with a cup of coffee I read
a posthumous poem by a woman
I met in a cloud of gin-breath
forty years ago, her face a smear
of bad makeup, her smile forced.
From her I learned that people
like us stand at right angles
to the world almost as Satan
stood at right angles to Yahweh,
precipitating doom. The coffee
tastes bitter, too strong. I dump it
down the sink and a voice chokes
from the drain, a voice not quite
like that dead poet’s, a stutter
of phonemes, no entire words.
I run enough water to drown it,
then brew a fresh pot of coffee
and step outside again in brave
September glare, my shadow falling
wherever it wants, even against
the grain of the bright blue air.
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