Refrain, by Karen Moulton

Echo No. 25, by Jackson Pollock (USA) 1951

​Refrain
 
She wants this relationship
to work out—the others
complained she never opened
up. At least with this one
her door is ajar. He’d like
to get to know her, he said.
 
He’d like to get to know her.
He said, “Tell me your darkest
thought, the one you won’t say
aloud.” Her brain scrambled ideas:
a Jackson Pollock painting.
Question marks on the inside
 
of her eyelids. Questions mark
her insides. Eyelids twitch as ears
listen to echoes of his voice prod
and provoke, the sound, a horse
kick, smacks her loin and flank.
Was anyone worth this inquiry?
 
Was anyone worth this? Inquiry,
invasion, inquisition more like.
Now the low moan of closing, a scrap
of promise defects through the gap,
exit the last gasp of possibility.
She shuts the door on him.
 
She shuts the door on all of them.

​Karen Moulton

Karen Moulton is the author of three chapbooks: One Year Ago Today and Other Poems of Revelation, NOW, and The Unpartnered Wife. She’s had work published in Rattle and SLANT: A Journal of Poetry. She is a retired teacher who taught in Key West, Florida, Shanghai, China, and Taipei, Taiwan. She lives in Flippin, Arkansas, with her husband, Ken Forman, and their dog, Darwin. Much of her recent work centers around Ken, Darwin, and the constant surprise of living in the Ozarks. She discovered ekphrastic poetry through online classes taught by Barbara Krasner. 
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