Ciara Shuttleworth
Waiting for Nothing
There is no time for this
or much of anything else.
Angle down the street
and you’ll get a few sideways looks, too.
Raise your hand in hello
as if you know someone,
merge with the crowd
and they’ll forget.
Light through my wine glass leaves
a red prism across the book
I meant to read
before steps on the stairs
did not attach to a knock
at my door. No, waiting
for nothing is never dull.
If you sit through the credits, the theater
will empty to the ones unwilling
or –able to go home, their faces
mad with concentration, like maybe
they know a minor gaffer or composer,
like they want to be alone and this
is as close as they ever get.
Me? I hide
in my closet like a child, cedar boards
cool against my legs, and party dresses
brush their gauze against my face, and I believe
again in dancing, although I haven’t
in years―or days…time seeps in and out
of clocks too smoothly to tell.
I sidle down the street, angling
the wrong way through
after work foot traffic.
I raise my hand in hello to no one
and merge with the crowd. They think
I know someone. They think
I’m done waiting. They stare
sideways like presidents on money.
They move on.
Ciara Shuttleworth’s work has been published in journals including Alaska Quarterly Review, Weber- The Contemporary West,
The New Yorker, and The Southern Review. She is currently working on a series of poems about her childhood in Nebraska.
Her website iswww.ciarashuttleworth.com
Return to May 2014 Edition
There is no time for this
or much of anything else.
Angle down the street
and you’ll get a few sideways looks, too.
Raise your hand in hello
as if you know someone,
merge with the crowd
and they’ll forget.
Light through my wine glass leaves
a red prism across the book
I meant to read
before steps on the stairs
did not attach to a knock
at my door. No, waiting
for nothing is never dull.
If you sit through the credits, the theater
will empty to the ones unwilling
or –able to go home, their faces
mad with concentration, like maybe
they know a minor gaffer or composer,
like they want to be alone and this
is as close as they ever get.
Me? I hide
in my closet like a child, cedar boards
cool against my legs, and party dresses
brush their gauze against my face, and I believe
again in dancing, although I haven’t
in years―or days…time seeps in and out
of clocks too smoothly to tell.
I sidle down the street, angling
the wrong way through
after work foot traffic.
I raise my hand in hello to no one
and merge with the crowd. They think
I know someone. They think
I’m done waiting. They stare
sideways like presidents on money.
They move on.
Ciara Shuttleworth’s work has been published in journals including Alaska Quarterly Review, Weber- The Contemporary West,
The New Yorker, and The Southern Review. She is currently working on a series of poems about her childhood in Nebraska.
Her website iswww.ciarashuttleworth.com
Return to May 2014 Edition