To A Stranger
After Walt Whitman
Stranger, I’ve noticed you eating your cereal in the cereal cafe and, look,
I’m having trouble with the notion of you spending the rest of your life
neither wanting nor needing me. I have tried to make myself
visible to you but still you insist upon reading your Penguin Classic paperback
and eating your cereal in the cereal café as though I don’t matter
and I can’t help but wonder what if there was some sort of terrible
accident right now, not caused by me, where you sprained your ankle
or something, so it was left to me to drag you out of the flames or whatever,
then you’d notice me, and you’d be like wow, my hero and I’d be like no,
I just did what anybody would do and you’d be like, regardless, I wish to return
the favour, let’s begin with me putting my tongue in your ear and I’d be like, no,
if you think this was about tongues in ears then you’re very much mistaken,
that’s not what any of this is about at all, and you’d be like, no
I’d really feel better if we did the ear thing and I’d say well, yes, all right, go on then
Michael Conley is a poet and fiction writer from Manchester, UK. His debut collection of stories, Flare and Falter, is available from Splice and was longlisted for the 2019 Edge Hill Prize. He was the winner of the National Poetry Competition’s Peggy Poole Prize in 2022.