A Slant on Bias

by Michael Sandler

My greeting feels off-kilter,
the How are you? too quick, too loud.
Perhaps I’ve warped an intent

to show we’re no different,
my smile intense as if to mask
a catalogue of sins—but which?

Ooga-booga epithets some spew
to wall you off? A warding off
of closeness, the attempts to shift

out of your lane as I speed up
to remove a whit of clearance,
the brake lines on emotion leaking?

Or the oblique slips, closeted
almost, encased in a conscience pure
as Venetian glass and well-inclined

the way a bevel on some mirrors
can bend the truth of white light:
those gazing from an angle notice

the colors, while I within the frame
observe a familiar, smiling self,
the image blurring just at the edges.