O Nightly Thoughts

[Isis]

I like this poem a lot - it's easy for me to connect with, especially the feeling of turning the first poem in months into a poem about how difficult it is to write. I like how aggressively mundane a lot of the images are. I don't mean this as a bad thing. Most of the stuff described in the poem is familiar, and that helps me get into the mindset of the poem: the shirt that's been sweated through so many times, the Micky D's, feeling too hot and tired and meh to read. I haven't been there exactly, but I've been there.

There are a few word choices that I found kind of weird, though. (This is getting nitpicky, fair warning).

The days, at least, are attractive and gay,

giving this coastal town dignity;
in the hot light of summer McDonald's is France, almost.
The nights are repellant and aggressive.

"Gay" used in this context feels like such a colloquialism - I'm assuming that here it means "bright, fun, lively". But most of the poem is rooted in the now, in the products of late 20th and 21st century life.

I like the idea of McDonald's as almost France, but I'm left wondering how: is it so hot out that the thought of walking there for some fries is as appealing as walking to France? Or is it as cultured as this coastal town is going to get? One comparison says something about the speaker, one says something about the place. Either way it's sort of funny. But it's an open ended image, a joke some readers might miss. I feel like I'm missing or almost missing it; the more I think about it, the less clear it seems.

Beside my bed is a Kindle
with an H. Rider Haggard in it, 20% read.
I don't know if I can be bothered to read.

I found the repetition of "read" a little odd: same spelling, different sounds. The present tense/infinitive form of "read" sounds a lot more hanging and open ended than the past tense version, which I think is what creates the oddness here. The first "read" is past tense, so it sounds and feels heavy. The second "read" is infinitive, and the longer sound of the word suggests the poem might continue. But it doesn't. I find that hanging feeling at the end of the poem a little bit frustrating.

My muse is perpetually frustrated, like a gay man's trophy wife

I think there's a poem here …. maybe worth exploring next time you hit a wall? What if the frustrated wife got to speak for a change, and be the poet?