New Poetry by Stu Hatton

friday night sutra

 

Once the first-drink glow

subsides, you feel a slight pain

in your career.

                           If you seek not ‘small-talk’

but its opposite (whatever that may be),

where, & with whom, might you begin?

Do you find speaking becomes somewhat

possible?

                 And then to seek what: closure?

opening? or the petalled eye

of oblivion?

                     Are you yet another who sings

a love of borders, who’d suffer

any old flustered tale?

                                         Or if pressed

to name names, will you point the finger

at all the other pointing fingers, each aimed

at a different mugshot of the moon?

                                                                   As you stumble again

on the dim set of Night of the Introvert,

beware the low-hanging wisdom:

‘it is only a thought

that will trouble’.

- © Stu Hatton 2021

Stu Hatton lives and writes on unceded Dja Dja Wurrung country in Campbells Creek, Victoria. Recently his work has appeared in Burrow, Otoliths and Verity La. He is currently preparing his third poetry collection, entitled In the Not-too-distant Present.