Two Poems by J.K. Durick

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There’s a message in your hesitancy,

That gap of time before you speak
That tells me more about the moment
Than any words you may come up with.

I have been studying all your silences

For many years now. I note each pause,
Its spacing, its timing and then its cause.
I have made a science of your silence.

I have become an expert on uncertainty,

A connoisseur of caution, a devotee of
All doubtfulness and your indecision,
The local authority on tentativeness.

And I have tried everything to stop it:

Fed you lines at times, kept talking over
Your pauses, or quickly looked away
As if distracted by what you might say.

And I have imitated you to you at times,

Used your gestures, opened that chasm
Between my speaking parts and filled it
With the nothing you’ve always shared

with me.

 

 

 

 

A Slip

 

It was something

so small

 

in the greater scheme

of things,

 

a bit of history

that can’t be fixed,

 

misplaced words,

a lapse in judgment

 

with consequences

as heavy as time

as heavy as silence.

 

Normally, we said

the expected

as if it mattered,

 

patterns we could

predict and tame,

 

routines we knew

were safe to say,

 

except that once

when I went on

to say what I said,

 

words, I still hear,

things, I should never

have said out loud,

but did.

 

 

 

J. K. Durick is presently a writing teacher at the Community College of Vermont and an online writing tutor. His recent poems have appeared in Literary Juice, Napalm and Novocain, Third Wednesday, and Common Ground Review.