by Louis Lafair, 18
St. Stephen’s Episcopal School, Austin, Texas
The protagonist enters the bedroom.
Which I don’t need to describe. You can
already see the
bed
bookshelf
dresser
the bedroom.
My pen strikes paper and in the span-of-a-
single-sentence becomes your
lamp
alarm clock
desk
bedroom.
With one word I paint
a technicolor panorama of your lifestyle in motion
sheets sprawled across the floor
stacks of notebooks shoved into a corner
drawers, half-open, I don’t have to tell you what’s inside of them, you already know.
Something in that drawer.
Something in that drawer.
Something in that drawer.
Something in that drawer.
Something in that drawer.
Something in that drawer.
Something in that drawer.
Something in that drawer.
Something in that drawer.
Something in that drawer.
Something in that drawer.
Something in that drawer.
Something in that drawer.
Something in that drawer.
Every drawer is full, but I–
I haven’t added any
thing to any of them. Nothing
in that drawer. Nothing in
that drawer. The only items
in any of the drawers are
your own. Those fourteen rhyming lines are a sonnet of
your own composition. They are
your bedroom, built out of matchsticks
your memory, burnt onto paper
your self, waving awkwardly from the other end of a crooked mirror.
In this poem,
in all poems,
you
are the eternal protagonist.
Written in Response to Ron Padgett’s “Nothing in That Drawer”