Sunday Verse
The Memory
by Gilbert Sorrentino
A smell of apricots that brings a place
to mind. To the eye. Words twist in the air
in tortured anagrams
shards fall into your life
that once had meaning
you think. You are arrested and your face
is brought to bear on all of it. This man
that man. A woman is in it somewhere
for the asking but the apricots overpower
you, the sentences clamor, voices,
voices.
The air shifts, you thought you were
in the street, you are in a room, what room
can it be, it seems familiar, it is full
of a distant smell, sweet and thin
and these anagrams
are falling into patterns, of course you
are in a room, this is a smell of apricots.
They bring a place
to mind. These voices are meaningless,
are tortured problems twisting in air.
