Steve Busonik

Will Not Be Said

For if I told you how,
As I stand in a doorway
While the muted merriment of people
Who understand social form
Wafts out toward me and wilts the carnation
I have rakishly threaded through the buttonhole
Of my J.C. Penney off-the-rack dinner jacket,
Before I understand what I am feeling,
Shame's effluvium already rises,
Like backwash up basement pipes that do not connect
To any municipal drainage system —
If I told you that,
Purely in the act of telling,
My shame would straight become: silly.

Your shame, of course,
Is different. Yours is
The bleeding ache of a knife wound
That struck heart-close
Long, long ago.
The surgeons didn't think you would survive.
And you didn't.
And it's only one of hundreds you carry,
The consequent sepsis scarcely controlled
By the alcohol and empty sex
And other antibiotics
You have been prescribed.
No, your shame is profound,
Tragic, seething, searing,
Incarnadine like the blood
That rushes to your ruddy cheeks
From your masticated heart.

Steve Busonik began his semblance of adulthood as a professional cellist. But after nine years with the Columbus (Ohio) Symphony, he retracted his endpin for good and pursued a graduate degree in English literature. After a brief, brackish stint as an academic advisor at Ohio State, he dabbled in software management for a company headquartered near Washington, D. C. He currently teaches English and writes database applications for fun in Raleigh, North Carolina. An occasional poem struggles upward from some murky depth or other. This is his first published poem.