Diminishing Returns by C.B. Anderson :: ShatterColors Literary Review

Diminishing Returns

by C.B. Anderson

Almost every day conventional romances
gasp and gutter like spent candles placed in sconces
tended by old saintly women lost in trances,
and it's easy to forget that all he wants is
just a chance to seem a bit too young and eager,
knowing all the while at least one half the battle
turns on getting by with scanty funds of meager
charm, or what amounts to superficial prattle.

Men are at a disadvantage when it comes to
managing exchanges such as this because she
always has the upper hand and turns the thumbscrew
any time the slightest little mention does he
make of how the willingness she showed in other
times (before the wedding) went a whole lot deeper
than the circumspection counseled by her mother
(long before he wondered whether he should keep her).

C.B. Anderson was the longtime gardener for the PBS television series, The Victory Garden. Nearly two hundred of his poems have been published online and in print over the past four years. Recently, one of them appearing in The Raintown Review was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

All content copyright © 2006-08 by ShatterColors, unless otherwise indicated. All rights reserved.
Reproduction of material, in whole or in part, from any ShatterColors Literary Review
pages without written permission of the copyright owners is strictly prohibited.
Site designed and built by Robert Scott Leyse, with input and logo by Granville Papillon,
and wallpaper by Edward Haven from two of his paintings.