POETRY - ISSUE FIVE
Ansatz: Confronting a Shard of Glass
ZOË HITZIG
* * *
Did this fracture off that cocktail shaker?
The one with docked tails leaping over hedges
to follow the hounds only to off their riders in-
to a morass? The one with riders walking back
to the stable, days after first dark after first cast?—
encountering the tracks of a stag on their long
walk back the conundrum of cooperation settling over
one by one by each daring defeat daring to defect.
The housekeeper left a note. Says the shaker fell
and fell on her head, second time, so sorry.
She is sorry and don’t we own many hundred
cocktail shakers yet mix our cocktails
in tall glasses with a fork. What does that suggest
about the tone of your latest apology, or mine,
about the texture of our wrought-zinc bar top,
about the taste of the curling peel in your
fifth negroni. What does that suggest about
pretense. About the stag hunt. The answer matters
but we have a new blender. This shard will fit
in the blender, will blend down to fragments,
splinters, particles, dust, will taste good
if I add crushed ice. Glass is liquid after all
and these horses were frozen, frozen
because the hunt has no end nor maxim, the hunt
is not a hunt, it is a dance, a dance charging
toward self-deceit with guns and hounds
to settle into a still, sad, now-fractured unreality.
The one with docked tails leaping over hedges
to follow the hounds only to off their riders in-
to a morass? The one with riders walking back
to the stable, days after first dark after first cast?—
encountering the tracks of a stag on their long
walk back the conundrum of cooperation settling over
one by one by each daring defeat daring to defect.
The housekeeper left a note. Says the shaker fell
and fell on her head, second time, so sorry.
She is sorry and don’t we own many hundred
cocktail shakers yet mix our cocktails
in tall glasses with a fork. What does that suggest
about the tone of your latest apology, or mine,
about the texture of our wrought-zinc bar top,
about the taste of the curling peel in your
fifth negroni. What does that suggest about
pretense. About the stag hunt. The answer matters
but we have a new blender. This shard will fit
in the blender, will blend down to fragments,
splinters, particles, dust, will taste good
if I add crushed ice. Glass is liquid after all
and these horses were frozen, frozen
because the hunt has no end nor maxim, the hunt
is not a hunt, it is a dance, a dance charging
toward self-deceit with guns and hounds
to settle into a still, sad, now-fractured unreality.
Zoë Hitzig will soon finish an undergraduate degree in Mathematics & Philosophy.
