k e n    r u m b l e

from A Monologue for Voices

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I am thinking about being angry at June.
(Be thinking.)

I am not planning on being angry at June.
(Think being.)

I am happy with June now.
(I am thinking about a time when I was.)
-I am so many things.-

Grass grows about the house.
(I am waiting for Tim.)

I am thinking about the future.
(I think, “we will talk about my feelings.”)

At June.
(We will talk about how I am afraid.)

I do not want any part of any anger at June.
(I am sitting.)

I sit.
(I love.)

Identify.
(I do not want to be angry.)

I do not want to write about the coffee cup.
(I write “about.”)

I am.
(Tim is on my side.)

“I” varies.
(Inaction.)

I have no spoon today.
(I will travel today.)

Change positions often.
(Tim is not here.)

An empty bottle instead of a cup.
(Tim is my friend.)

It is just a bottle.
(It bottles.)
-The air in there.-

Bottled up.
(I think it feels bottled up.)

It feels like plastic.
(I drank the water.)

I did not drink all the water.
(What shall the poor inherit?)

I feel better.
(I have upsetting thoughts.)

I’ve had it.
(Tim is late.)

June called to “check on me.”
(I feel my socks.)

Only when I think about them.
(I have written this before.)

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She is mad at mad at me.
(She is angry at me.)
-From her to me.-

I think that she is afraid.
(She is actually afraid.)

She said, “I don’t think I am being taken very seriously.”
(This is not the point.)

Here is the point.
(She said something, and I thought about it.)
-What else can you do with thought?-

“I don’t think you are taking me seriously.”
(I think about her.)
-I look at a flower, and I see the sun.-

I think about what she wants.
(I watched her walk out the door.)
-I want to be what she wants.-

I think about what I think she wants.
(I write down “she wants.”)
-We want love.-

I said, “I love you – have a good day.”
(I don’t remember if I said “babe.”)

“You’re not taking me seriously,” is what I think she said.
(I fixed the typewriter.)
-Then she left.-

I fixed it twice.
(She does not want to go tonight.)
-Sometimes I think right.-

She said she did not want to go tonight.
(“You can go,” she said.)

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KEN RUMBLE is the author of Key Bridge (Carolina Wren, 2007) and a writer-in-residence at Elsewhere Artist Collaborative in Greensboro, North Carolina. His poems have appeared in Parakeet, Octopus, Typo, the tiny, One Less Magazine, Cutbank, and others. President Letters, his e-chapbook, will be published by Scantily Clad Press in the summer of 2008.

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