#147: "Done" by Mark Wisniewski

~This poem was previously published in River Styx (2011).

Done

she'd heard I had

an agent & asked me to dinner

& I ate

the dinner with

her & she'd heard I'd lived

in only one room & asked

if she could

see it & I said the couple

who owned the house with the room

forbade visitors

since they wanted to keep

their 2 small

daughters from even the sound

of what people who lived

in one room did with people willing

to visit

but it was now well

past the daughters'

bedtime & the house proved dark

the couple presumably

upstairs & I'd grown tired

of myself in the room

so I whispered "let's time our

footfalls" & soon we were

in & I closed the door

turned on the light

she stepped to my desk

read a letter

from the agent

removed her blouse

pants

bra

got on the bed

on her hands

& knees slid the panties

down her thighs

whispered to say she cared

only about whether I

liked it which made it harder

to like

through most of it I felt

used & sure I'd end up

homeless & when I was

done she stood

upright & dressed facing away

turned

kissed my mouth &

tiptoed out

that agent never selling

a word of mine

those 2 daughters maybe

now married & divorced

perhaps about to learn how

it can all happen

in one room

*****

THE STORY BEHIND THE POEM

Numerous poets have told me, sometimes angrily, that I'm no poet--too much narrative, they say, line breaks that break line-breaking rules, no workshop experience in poetry, apparent failure to read the masters--& for me now, okay, sure, fine, these naysaying poets have probably always been correct. I do not have the soul of a poet-in-2014; probably I should also mention that poetry, when I wrote it, was often just a quiet place to hide when the fiction game became unbearable. "Done" sort of exemplifies this, no? For calling it poetry, I apologize to any & all generous enough to read it all the way through.

*****

ABOUT MARK WISNIEWSKI

Mark Wisniewski's third novel, Watch Me Go (Penguin Putnam, January 2015), has received early praise from Salman Rushdie, Daniel Woodrell, Rebecca Makkai, and Ben Fountain. His short fiction has won a Pushcart Prize and appeared in Best American Short Stories. His poems have appeared in The Iowa Review and Poetry.