August 2020
Bio Note: I'm a retired English Professor spending my time writing, taking
the occasional photograph, trying to follow the Dharma. This poem is included in my
full-length poetry volume Time is Not a River (available on Amazon) published
by Transcendent Zero Press in March 2020.
Editor's Note: I asked Michael about the background for this poem, and he replied:
"Jim - the woman in the poem is a composite character and not really based on any one person. I did have a girl friend in NJ who had a fire escape outside her living room window where we would sometimes sit on the windowsill and hang our feet out the window. Actually the genesis of the poem is from a phrase I had jotted down in an old journal "the third rail of love" - the poem is built around that line."
Editor's Note: I asked Michael about the background for this poem, and he replied:
"Jim - the woman in the poem is a composite character and not really based on any one person. I did have a girl friend in NJ who had a fire escape outside her living room window where we would sometimes sit on the windowsill and hang our feet out the window. Actually the genesis of the poem is from a phrase I had jotted down in an old journal "the third rail of love" - the poem is built around that line."
The Cut Above the Heart
The girl in the room upstairs
has the best view,
she says, overlooking
the joggers’ path
and tennis courts, cracked
and overgrown with weeds.
The one time she invited
me in for a drink,
we sat on the fire escape
smoking and finishing
off a bottle of wine;
I stayed for breakfast
but she never asked me up again.
After the eggs and toast
and coffee, after the last touch,
when she opened her shirt
to show me the scar
just above her right nipple,
she shoved me out the door,
saying, “that’s what you get
when you touch
the third rail of love.”
Sometimes at night
I could hear her crying
or making love,
and in the morning
it was always the same,
the door slamming and foot
steps on the stairs heading
down to the lobby alone,
another cut above the heart.
Originally published in Main Street Rag, 2017
©2020 Michael Minassian
Editor's Note: If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the
author (email address above) to tell her or him. You might say what it is about the poem that moves you. Writing to the author is what builds the community at Verse Virtual.
It is very important. -JL