The Party Poem by Patrick Dennis

There's a belt of seven or eight people over there
who seem to know each other.
Round about, though, among the fifty other guests
there's a staccato of silence. Here and there
a tug of hair, many awkward twitches,
moves definitive and defensive, glancings off,
and elegant and awkward leave taking to group and regroup.

We, who seem to have the lineaments of a common soul,
feel the snag of guts and heart on a conceited strangeness
as though we were foe not friend.