pie

i read this poem this morning and it made me miss my days of pretending to be a literary critic. (i was an english major and so that's how i spent many hours in college- pretending to be a fancy big-words-using literary genius). looking back, maybe i was going through a pretentious period, but it was energizing and made me feel alive. so i am going to quick-write my thoughts on this poem, which i liked immensely when i read it.

Pie
by X.J. Kennedy

Whoever dined in this café before us
Took just a forkful of his cherry pie.
We sit with it between us. Let it lie
Until the overworked waitperson comes
To pick it up and brush away the crumbs.

You look at it. I look at it. I stare
At you. You do not look at me at all.
Somewhere, a crash as unwashed dishes fall.
The clatter of a dropped knife splits the air.
Second-hand smoke infiltrates everywhere.

Your fingers clench the handle of a cup
A stranger drained. I almost catch your eye
For a split second. The abandoned pie
Squats on its plate before us, seeping red
Like a thing not yet altogether dead.

***
my first instinct is to ask- what is the relationship between these two people at the table? and my first-instinct answer is that i think they are lovers who are about to have a break-up conversation. "a thing not yet altogether dead," the pie, is their relationship - the pie is sitting there now, but it's undesireable, and someone's about to take it away and then its not just going to be undesirable, it's going to be dead. just as one of the people at the table is about to say something that kills the relationship. and we are witnessing the moment in time right before its death.

it's a sad poem but it really speaks to me. i love the use of metaphor in things like uneaten, unfresh food. and i love that this is cherry pie- oozing red goo/blood. i make objects metaphorical all the time- like the fact that my scrabble game is missing a blank tile. this means, of course, that my life as a whole is short on blank canvases- i need to work on expanding my options. it's fun and i'm going to try and be more conscious of things sitting in front of me to see if they are saying something!

finally, i think my favorite literary technique used in this poem is kennedy's placement of "A stranger," on a new line. the reader stumbles here and has to read it twice or three times to realize that the stranger that the narrator is speaking of is not the person sitting across from him, but the person who left the cup. the fragmentation of the sentence illurates the fragmentation between the two people and puts the word "stranger" into our heads so that we also ponder whether these two people have become strangers to each other.