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Perspective

Poems

Non-consensual perspective

Poem by

Isaac McCarthy

6 May 2021

It was rude of me to goggle the poor man for longer than a moment, but I took two to first figure the rod that supported the weight of his head and then the wooden spoon gripped between his quivering lips, moonlighting as a page turning tool, and I wonder if he has ever once found himself bereft of misery or if I ought to ever be allowed to feel it again, and that if I ever do, then perhaps it is for me to approach him and ask politely if he wouldn’t mind sharing, and then I catch his limbs loitering by him and question if he ever feels contempt for their audacity to mockingly linger and thieve the flow of his blood with impunity, and does any moment of discomfort—nausea, chills, an itch—only serve to remind him callously of his powerlessness or does he now regard them as mere companions on a journey absolutely unique, abstruse and confined to the point of proving his resolve, or has he resolved only, and not only do I pity the poor man to a degree of expunging the woes from my mind but also pity the weakness of my character that in only two moments I thought for him the absence in his life, judged him poor and regarded contentment and its lack of presence to be something that I can confirm and something I can confirm alone.

I gather my scattered woes and walk on holding them close, ashamed that I ever thought them insignificant, ashamed that I ever thought I knew this man and thought him nothing more than an unwilling subject of my perspective.

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The Lovepost
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