by Terese Svoboda

It’s #tbt! Enjoy this great one from SWWIMEvery Day‘s archives!

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A fork and a spoon lie together
to spoon and to fork.

E = MC squared says the spoon.
I don't have the energy says the fork.

Forgiveness? says the spoon.
It is as if we lie on a vast table

says the fork. Useless.
The spoon measures a dose.

Sink to your knees. The fork
submits. The past is prescient.

The fork clasps the spoon.
Of course, says the spoon.

It's all about portion control.
Let's sleep says the fork.

Weep? says the spoon.
The spoon keeps busy until
the fork is sorry too, like the song.

Make me toast says the spoon, and snappy.
The fork says Who turned out

the light? Birds begin singing
their favorite: O moon, O moon.

The table was laid, says the spoon,
not me. Tines, my dear, are everything,

says the fork. My tines are retired.
They spoon through course

after intercourse, the hunger being
incurable, inconsolable.

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"Silverwear" is from Terese Svoboda's Theatrix: Poetry Plays (Anhinga Press), her eighth book of poetry. Hitler and My Mother-in-Law, her second memoir, was published last December. PW said, "Readers will be riveted."

by Terese Svoboda

A fork and a spoon lie together
to spoon and to fork.

E = MC squared says the spoon.
I don't have the energy says the fork.

Forgiveness? says the spoon.
It is as if we lie on a vast table

says the fork. Useless.
The spoon measures a dose.

Sink to your knees. The fork
submits. The past is prescient.

The fork clasps the spoon.
Of course, says the spoon.

It's all about portion control.
Let's sleep says the fork.

Weep? says the spoon.
The spoon keeps busy until
the fork is sorry too, like the song.

Make me toast says the spoon, and snappy.
The fork says Who turned out

the light? Birds begin singing
their favorite: O moon, O moon.

The table was laid, says the spoon,
not me. Tines, my dear, are everything,

says the fork. My tines are retired.
They spoon through course

after intercourse, the hunger being
incurable, inconsolable.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Terese Svoboda's Professor Harriman's Steam Air-Ship, her most recent book of poetry, was published in 2016. Anything That Burns You: A Portrait of Lola Ridge, Radical Poet, was published in paper in 2018, and Great American Desert, a book of stories, in 2019. "Terese Svoboda is one of those writers you would be tempted to read regardless of the setting or the period or the plot or even the genre.”—Bloomsbury Review.