May 12:

I never wrote short poems, generally. They always looked limp to me, like the poem ends out of my own laziness. Even in this project, most poems last about a page, and there are at least three poems that are constructed like imposing towers, with stanzas that reach halfway across the page. I get trigger happy with images, and the more I write, the longer the lines get. And when I go back, I’m too attached to cut any of them. Most of the time I don’t even like to read the poems again after I’ve written them. There’s too much to read.

Maybe it’s because we’re near the end of this project, but most of the poems I’m writing now are tiny. They are 6 lines long, with two word stanzas. I don’t even know what they are about. I’m not even sure they’re about me. Here is one called turtle.

 

“turtle”

and there i was,

chiseling stanzas

 

under unforgiving

moonlight. i had

 

my anchors torn

from the sea.

 

i skipped stones

across the page,

 

waiting for a sea turtle

to graze my knees.

 

but none came.

in new york

 

all the turtles

have fled.