Yarrow House

Relative Conditional

“Leon, stop irritating and start participating,”
I demand, my right to demand assumed, white
woman, black man. My mouth reacting history, or
expecting him to be engaged here in good faith?

Talking across or to? Whose world is it?
But we word-working, storytellers continue, lounged
around our café table, huddled over pages, 
struggling together over word choice, motivation,

refining the plot, negotiating a fine, unnamed line.
How we talk through a haze of color—what is there
unsaid?—and always looping back to, what’s 
the point? “What are you trying to say, Judith?”

Leon demands. “Cut to the point.” Writers talking 
writing, carving out the black and white, trampling, 
otherwise, whatever hangs in the gray air between us
unspoken, alive, entangled in our words.

Published in Borderlands, 1999

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Onetime reproduction for non-resale purposes permitted by the author with the following credit line: by J Yarrow