Yesterday, I spared forty-one poems
from a sudden apocalypse.
An unfortunate three-hundred-ninety
of their kin didn’t make it through
the maelstrom and tribulation.
They disappeared in an act
worthy of a fundamentalist’s
Old Testament, angry god.
If I wanted to feel grand,
I could tell you I smote them.
It had become clear that they were
unclean, insufficient, inadequate
and so I washed them out, left them
bleeding ink in a bathtub, becoming blank
pages. Call the ex-poems the Nephilim.
The survivors cling to the spine
of a black leather journal.
It’s Mount Ararat; they’re
Noah, Shem, Ham, Japheth
and a small menagerie.
I have instructed them
to tell this story to each newcomer
so that all the scions
will fear and never forget
the consequence for being bad poetry.
(2003)
