POEM OF THE DAY BY ELEANOR WILNER

Encounter in the Local Pub

Unlike Francis Bacon, we no longer believe in the little patterns we make of the chaos of history.
—Overheard remark

As he looked up from his glass, its quickly melting ice,

into the bisected glowing demonic eyes of the goat,

he sensed that something fundamental had shifted,

or was done. As if, after a life of enchantment, he

had awakened, like Bottom, wearing the ears of an ass,

and the only light was a lanthorn, an ersatz moon.

It was not that the calendar hadn’t numbered the days

with an orbital accuracy, its calculations

exact, but like a man who wants to hang a hammock

in his yard, to let its bright net cradle him, but only

has one tree, so he—wild and aware of it—knew

he had lost the order he required, and with it, rest—

his thoughts only a sagging bundle of loose ends,

and the heart, a naked animal in search of a pelt,

that once fell for every Large Meaning it could

wrap itself in, as organs are packed in ice for transit

from one ending to the next, an afterlife of parts—and

the whole? Exorbitant claim—not less than all,

and oddly spelled; its ear rhyme is its opposite,

the great hole in the heart of things. The goat,

he noticed, had a rank smell, feral. Unnerved,

he looks away, watches the last of his ice

as it melts, the way some godlike eye might see

the mighty glaciers in a slow dissolve back into sea.

He notes how incommensurate the simile, a last

attempt to dignify his shaking gaze, and reaches

for the bill; he’s damned if the goat will pay.


-Eleanor Wilner