THE RAVEN REVIEW
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  • Home
  • About
    • About Us
    • Contributors
    • Support Us
  • Submit
  • Current Issue
  • Archive
    • Volume I >
      • Issue I
      • Issue II
      • Issue III
      • Issue IV
    • Volume II >
      • Issue I
      • Issue II
      • Issue III
      • Issue IV
    • Volume III >
      • Issue I
      • Issue II
      • Issue III
      • Issue IV
    • Volume IV >
      • Issue I
      • Issue II
      • Issue III
      • Issue IV
    • Volume V >
      • Issue I
      • Issue II
      • Issue III
      • Issue IV
    • Volume VI >
      • Issue I
      • Issue II

In the Dining Room on the Third Floor

by Alice Duggan
The dining room spreads like a cold pasture at the top
of the afternoon. Somewhere to be, a choice to make

among shrunken choices. As I settle myself two people
come, wheeling to separate spots on the fence line,

woman and man. I turn my back and call my friend.
I reassure her also myself: yes, I’ll get better.

We say goodbye. When I turn around, I see the woman
crossing wide spaces to the big man who has parked himself

against a wall. He’s John Wayne folded in two.
She speaks to him softly, her hippie-long hair falling

down her back. Takes her jean jacket and wraps him in it.
She rubs his broad shoulders, his back. Soft words.

He stays immobile, speechless, unhorsed.
I close my phone. I watch. He speaks a few words

to her, at last.
Does he feel better now? Does she?

Alice Duggan's poems have appeared in Sleet Magazine, Water~Stone Review, Tar River Poetry, and Alaska Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. Her poems are also in a chapbook, A Brittle Thing, and an anthology, Home, from Holy Cow! Press. She’s interested in dailiness, in colloquial speech, the rhythm of voices, and in telling stories.