Sunday Sprinkle: 'Round Midnight by Kim Addonizio

Poem by Kim Addonizio

'Round Midnight 

In the book I’m reading: hard rain,
spike heels on pavement,
a man waiting in a rented room

to draw a woman down onto his bed.
She’s the wrong woman,
she’s a car wreck in a silk dress

and he can’t wait to touch her.
No plot without desire,
the more desperate the better.

I look up to find that here, too,
it’s raining. And now that I’m back
in my own quiet life

I feel like a character who’s barely
been imagined yet, just a name
wearing a faded T-shirt,

reaching for her glass of cold wine.
If only the river would surge into the streets,
if only a tree would uproot itself

or the roof fly off in a funnel of black wind.
Such is my life: A minute ago I was happy,
immersed in a book. Now I feel misery

only violence could cure. Now
I have to invent a story
to drag me out into the city,

toward music and grainy light
and the wrong men, I have to discover
what it is that I want

And who I’m going to have to hurt to get it.