Two Poems by Margery Hauser

Silence

We lay together
I twined around you like ivy on oak.
Warm and dark
a soft blanket of silence
comforted and carried us
together into a single dream.

          Morning came
          dreams dissolved.
          Light shone in the space
          between you and my idea of you.

We faced each other
you a wall against which
I flung myself.
Silence cold and gray
froze and shattered
strewing the ground with
fractured passion.

          no I wish no I can't
          no I meant no I should
          no but you no you wouldn't
          no you didn't no you never

          Shards of us pierced my soul
          desire catalyzed memory
          memory blurred and grew
          soft at the edges.

I sit alone in silence.
Our last words hang
in the empty air.
I breathe them in
like toxic fog
and my heart
implodes.



You said you were an open book

but you were written in a language
I could not decipher.

I did not know the grammar to translate your soul
parse the syntax of your heart.

Lost in a maze of modifiers
and descriptives,
confused by indecipherable
diacritical marks,
cryptic conjugations and declensions,

we spoke at
not with each other
ashamed to admit
we'd failed to understand --
each believing the failure
was ours alone.



Margery Hauser is a New York City poet whose work has appeared in Point Mass, Poetica Magazine, Umbrella, The Jewish Women's Literary Annual, Mobius, and other journals, both print and online.  She is the author of Fairyland Mail (NoNet Press, 2013) and a member of the Parkside Poets Collective.