One sure way to feel
like flat cola in a wax cup,
baking under July sun,
is to wait six months and
read what you’ve written.
Revisit your own congealed
feelings, words which have
suffered the linguistic equivalent
of an expiration date.
One absolutely sure way to feel
like broken teeth in mottled gums
is to remember that
writing is an act of creation,
conception, but the new life born
will not grow with you. It is
a picture of a miscarriage. Crumbling,
moldering: a stillborn in a snapshot,
yellowed and curling at the edges.
Old art is the blackmail photo
every family keeps on hand.
The poem, the story, the
painting. That single frame
of your naked self, a baby
in the bath. Undeveloped,
pruned, embarrassing and exposed
forever, or for as long as the
paper will hold up.
(2003)
