After Magritte’s “Listening Room”
Inside the monstrous apple assigned to me a house floats in the flesh
and I, Anonymouse
climb the walls and scribble
CHEESE
on a breeze that brings the smell of apple wafting through tiny windows
of my very own chamber.
Watching my back,
mouse ears listening all the while for ominous fall
of colossal footsteps,
I nibble edges
of mob words, dream a loosening
of letters
R-E-D
red, as in bloodshed.
I envision peels curling off into space, house grounded in garden
of bountiful grain and fruit, everything clean,
all foul lagoons and guns gone. Relieved,
I, Anonymouse
whisper cheese in dreams and smile, then laugh — beautiful!
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About Jacquelyn Shah
Jacquelyn "Jacsun" Shah is drawn to the offbeat, the zany, the quirky,
and loves absurdist and surrealist poetry. Founding member of Voices
Breaking Boundaries (VBB), a literary arts organization in Houston,
TX, she has taught creative writing through Writers
In The Schools and at the University
of Houston, where she completed both M.F.A. (creative writing) and
Ph.D. (creative writing and English literature). Her work has appeared in
various journals and anthologies, such as Cranky,
Margie,
Tar River Poetry, The Texas
Review, Anon (Britain),
RHINO, and Vine
Leaves Literary Journal (Australia). A poetry chapbook small
fry has just been published by Finishing
Line Press and she has a full-length poetry book, What to Do
with Red, forthcoming.
