THE RUSTLINGEST Poem by Judith Herzberg

There is plastic that rustles
and there is plastic that rustles dreadfully.
It is this sort of plastic which the old man
who is sitting at the back of the hall has with him.
The poet reads about death about Warsaw
the ghetto the dark shadow
wings of melancholy and other
modern sadness accessible
to the unauthorised. The man rustles
to the front, stands by the exit
needs to pee perhaps? Someone,
helpful, opens the creaking
door; the poet reads on feels
obliged to experience, his verse 'gouges
the skin of the time.' The man is offended
he does not want to go out. And just
as the poet mentions breath
he hawks up some phlegm. Then
he rustles, rustles dreadfully
the old man with his stick and bag
of dreadfully rustling plastic
deaf as he is he crackles
mumbling back to his seat.
In his almost basalt hand
the rustlingest with something in it.