Despite intimidation it has its way.
Still, from a closet with a one-way
window, you scrutinize that self—
helpless, though reluctant to crack
the door, peel off into that space,
fisticuff that thief into submission,
some admission, since if you did,
there’d always be a next you, back
in the dark, seizing the emptied seat
opposing the pane of introspection.
D. R. James’s latest of ten collections are Mobius Trip and Flip Requiem (Dos Madres Press, 2021, 2020), and his prose and poems have appeared in a wide variety of anthologies and journals. Recently retired from college teaching, James lives with his wife in the woods near Saugatuck, Michigan. https://www.amazon.com/author/drjamesauthorpage