Michael A. Arnzen

THE THIEF CAME IN

The thief came in
when I was in the middle of writing this poem
but I just looked up and smirked
and then returned to my work
even though I'd never seen a burglar before

And even though he wore the cliché black ski mask
and black turtleneck above black pants and black boots
looking like some extra from a Batman set from the 1960s
and perhaps also being very very close to the Hamburgler in stature
with his too-white shifty eyes and warted nose
I didn't laugh or fight or call the police,
I just muttered

Not now
go away
I'm busy
writing this poem
and kept doing that in silence
as he gently rifled through my drawers
and quietly stuffed his bag with my prized possessions
and tenderly grabbed my partner by the hand

And I didn't even hear
the door muffle behind them
until just

now

and I looked up
and my cat meowed at me from an empty corner
her voice echoing in a way I'd never heard before
and I thought
that's it, there's nothing left
maybe I can concentrate now
until there was a knock on the door
and I answered
and barely recognized the man in the turtleneck
as he asked if I would be so kind
as to hand him my cat
and I did
and as he departed I felt free
but then sat down
and realized
my poem was gone


Mike's YouTube video reading of "The Thief Came In":



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Mike confesses: Writing is really the fine art of sustaining concentration on something another person might also find of interest...and here you have a poem about that struggle. I suppose you could call “The Thief Came In” a meta-poem or an instance of ars poetica -- a poetic meditation on poetry itself -- but perhaps it’s more broadly concerned with the lengths we might go to in order to keep that focus on our work in an era dominated by distraction. Even during the Covid pandemic, when so many of us were working from home, staying on one single task was very hard to do, and I know many writers and writing students who found themselves, surprisingly, blocked.

This is why I never write in public spaces, like cafes or libraries. Too many interesting distractions, all of which COULD be random fodder for fiction, but often they are just noise. Some writers work well with the 'white noise' of cafe chatter and clinking saucers and hissing spigots, but for me this is just extra mental traffic to navigate that often gets in the way.

This poem, actually, was inspired by accidentally BEING that white noise traffic once. I interrupted a writer friend who was so far gone in the grips of their own story world that they refused to reply to my questions, let alone acknowledge my presence; they just kept on typing away, intensely scrutinizing the screen of their laptop. They knew that I knew better than to interrupt a writer during their work. But I felt invisible for a second, and thought, rather snarkily: I bet I could steal your coffee cup and you wouldn’t even notice. Instead of doing that, the only thing I stole from them was the idea for this poem.

MICHAEL A. ARNZEN is the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of the novels Grave Markings and Play Dead. He's taught horror and suspense writing in the MFA in Writing Popular Fiction program at Seton Hill University since 1999.