Your Blueprint: Poor Girl … Your Silence, Your Absence Seemingly, But Not Really … Out For Blood? Mine? I Mind Read You, Your Intentions … Poem by Dennis Ryan

Friday afternoon, June 7,2024 at 4: 34 p.m. and 5: 40 p.m.

—this poem is for Amelie Ison of Leicester, England

'Silence can be a plan
rigorously executed …
—Adrienne Rich, 'Cartographies of Silence'

Absent? But not really. Waiting? Just …
silent, in hiding, just silence—but not totally,
me here reading your mind—you just waiting
silently for something to happen, the next shoe
to drop seemingly, you absent seeming, seemingly,
but not quite, right? Not really, little fox in hiding?
Little red fox afraid of the hunt needing protection,
needy, needing protection … yet… yes, you—
you remember that silly-poem-silly-fable you liked?

Fear mostly and betrayal and lying and absence,
do tell, do govern you governess—oh yes, of course,
the children of your poems as well, so childlike,
fearful. Has this been what you are waiting for,
wished me to say so plaintively to hear me say?
So plain, so plain, let's face it, face to face, so plainly
have you have been hiding behind this wall to hear,
that wall draped by a wide arras that hid the body—
oh, goodness! — old Polonius' bloody, stinking corpse! ?

Just a different inadvertent hunt by Hamlet, not Hal,
and I know not seems Hamlet-fashioned. This works!
That works! —

Poor girl …

I feel for you as I have told you, your mind not right,
out for? Blood? For blood? For what? Mine own?

Oh, yes, your latest latest strategy—I almost forgot,
to go silent, go into hiding these last few days! No,
I almost forgot myself, your stratagem. Silence your
plan, your cover, not so clever girl, clever to anticipate
this response, me reading you again—your blueprint?