
Hot Desk: Poetry from Michael Stratford Hutch #3
iv: aftertaste; burnt coffee
I spent eternities in that café
waiting
asking the room to take its place
at the foot of my table
kick off its shoes and start
talking telling
me everything
like spacetime was
just an old friend
oh I waited so long!
for something
(anything)
to come to mind
to scrape the insides
clean of this blankness
a hollow river
channelling a bad memory
like the aftertaste
of burnt coffee
I seemed to yawn open
cavernous full
of nothing
the non-resident who holds their breath
waiting for some impossible wave
to break never
Michael Stratford Hutch completed this poem as part of the Tasmanian Writers Centre Hot Desk residency program.