Poem
Chris McCabe
THE COUNSELLORS
THE COUNSELLORS
THE COUNSELLORS
Every counsellor needs to be counselled.A man becomes aware of his own mind, cauliflowers glass quadrants – sees the roots – like a wet wart.
He talks to the counsellor who listens (he is paid to listen). The counsellor notes that this man has reached an impasse. Unsure how to proceed the counsellor speaks to his counsellor. He echoes the impasse.
The counsellor’s counsellor misfires a typo into the monitor : & continues: he doesn’t want to think what could become.
All the combined impasses could make a fence across the globe – thousands of men’s problems mysterious as the workings of global finance. Nobody knows where they go. Each impasse. The echoes.
The man doesn’t care about that. He just talks & by increments he starts to feel a little better, so that one day he leaves.
The counsellor is left with the impasse – it has to go somewhere. He picks up a phone.
His counsellor turns on the screen.
And makes a call.
A call.
© 2008, Chris McCabe
Publisher: First published on PIW,
Publisher: First published on PIW,
Chris McCabe
(United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, 1977)
Chris McCabe was born in Liverpool in 1977, grew up there and studied for a degree in Literary Studies at the University of Central Lancashire in Preston. He moved to London when he was twenty-four, and now works as a Joint Librarian at the Poetry Library on the South Bank. He has published poems in a number of places including Poetry Salzburg Review, Shearsman, Magma and Poetry Review. His f...
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THE COUNSELLORS
Every counsellor needs to be counselled.A man becomes aware of his own mind, cauliflowers glass quadrants – sees the roots – like a wet wart.
He talks to the counsellor who listens (he is paid to listen). The counsellor notes that this man has reached an impasse. Unsure how to proceed the counsellor speaks to his counsellor. He echoes the impasse.
The counsellor’s counsellor misfires a typo into the monitor : & continues: he doesn’t want to think what could become.
All the combined impasses could make a fence across the globe – thousands of men’s problems mysterious as the workings of global finance. Nobody knows where they go. Each impasse. The echoes.
The man doesn’t care about that. He just talks & by increments he starts to feel a little better, so that one day he leaves.
The counsellor is left with the impasse – it has to go somewhere. He picks up a phone.
His counsellor turns on the screen.
And makes a call.
A call.
THE COUNSELLORS
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