The Scholar’s Fatigue
We dine in a swamp of papery ideas, cornered opinions;
a spiny call for digestion. When did I first reserve
a table for two? Bold and proud you stack up every day
ready to chew. In bed you block the covers
where another should be
exposing my ankles to vast inadequacy.
Half asleep I turn and slap a page awake, disturbed
by dust that doesn’t rise from your cool glossy face.
Slab by slab, you inch across my pillow, your incessant need
to saturate. Allow me to slough off the ken below the nape
contract with silliness, loll in blissful gape.
Resentment now is tome-thick, neither fulfilling
the warranty on this: to be absorbed and understood.
Yesterday I pounded you into a cupboard
to be ignored as, from time to time, books should.
But still seeps your confident pledge. I will be read.
Karen Hodgson Pryce lives, writes, and roams around the Cairngorms area of Scotland. Her poetry has been published in The Poets’ Republic, Mslexia, Open Mouse and Ink, Sweat & Tears.