The Interview
After reading
an essay
on faces
by Epstein,
A man turned
to his wife,
reading in bed
next to him,
and asked her
to describe
his features.
After a
moment’s
struggle,
she said,
well . . .
not ordinary.
Interesting . . .
different!
He asked, you mean
like a Picasso
portrait?
She wouldn’t say.
Turning on
his side,
he found himself
wondering
if his left ear
was really
his nose.
But then
he remembered:
Picasso mostly
painted women.
He turned to
his wife again,
You mean I have
a feminine face?
She wouldn’t say.
This story
could go on
from here,
but it doesn’t.
Like most things
in this life
it ends inconclusively.
• • •
T.P. Bird worked for many years in engineering as a drafter/designer/supervisor and recently retired from pastoral ministry and now lives in Lexington, KY. His love for poetry began while stationed in the army near Monterrey, CA. Discovering a bookstore on Fisherman’s Wharf he bought a collection of poems by Leonard Cohen and never looked back. He has had a few poems published in various journals. Of late he finds himself more committed to the craft of writing poems than thinking of himself as a poet. As he has written elsewhere in a poem: “I will listen, learn, and remember /and write my poems of speculation / my means of / seeing, recognizing, and naming this considered world.”