What—Oh!

Robert Wooten

It tied you down to a microcosm,
the curb of the street that you once knew
reduced to six inches in their camera’s eye;
it tied me up to a flight of fancy
that reality, this being the Real, precluded,
left me wondering how I had thought that:
And I couldn’t believe you knew the same thing, too,
looking beside me out of the corner of my eye,
out of the corner of my eye! I didn’t have
a corner in the seat there beside me,
but a suit, with a laptop, headphone
and office chat. I had to look away
just to remember who was there
so as not to dig the tautology.

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Robert Wooten
Robert Wooten's poetry currently appears in J: Journal and Hearts on Our Sleeves Press.  He does hold an MFA in poetry from the University of Alabama (1998) and earned an MA in English with a creative writing focus at North Carolina State University (1994).  His poem, "The Wind on Robert Lane," was awarded first-prize in the winter 2021-22 Dream Quest One Poetry competition.