Kay Middleton’s most recent poem to appear here was The green sea (November 2014).

When you go silent
By Kay Middleton

When you go silent I stare at my own
detention my intention to dislodge
suddenly halted by the blankness
of my reflection. It isn’t so much
a chill as the warmth
departing incrementally
until there is no word
to describe the insipidity.
Cotton stuffs my ears.
Chewing eats my brain.
Colorless, flavorless.
Gritty and gray as cremation
cinders slipping through fingers.
On that corner three men shift
and spit, adjust. Being three they
only cover three points of the compass.
One direction remains exposed.
I think it must be west.