A Cheap Layer of Spackling
It's not enough
to have white walls,
perfect edges,
a clean eggshell coating.
Tell me the truth.
Show me your spackling, the ugly spot
your beige turtleneck doesn't quite cover.
A crack left over from the last tenants.
Rough and honest, as most truths are.
White on white might as well be black.
Cobwebs and scuff marks tell better stories.
Do you even know what your plaster job covers?
What lies and omissions are waiting to be digested
by someone else's shoddy craftsmanship?
So many frames hanging
whose dust marks leave perfect gray squares
at awkward, uneven angles.
The lopsidededness is more evident
when the pictures are taken down.
A rusty hook, a crooked glance,
attempts to cover up the wrong questions.
Sometimes the whole wall makes no sense
until we imagine what lies behind
the cheap layer of spackling.
Take each imperfection as a world,
every lumpy spot a reality nudging to be set free.
Your cleanliness is misleading, a mask
whose deficiency is all the more evident in the blanch.
Varying degrees of the same polished failure,
dressed and ready for ten thousand new faces.
Or the same face ten thousand times.
Corey Ginsberg
Email: Corey Ginsberg
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