Thoughts from a Thinking Girl

I’ve given myself a writing assignment: Write a poem.

 

I argue with even this teacher’s assignment. An inane argument, a stall, I suppose, but my resistance demands its voice.

 

I ask: What is a poem these days?

 

Prose with more line breaks?
Ideas uncoupled?
Half-written thoughts that trail off?
Descriptions that lead only to the next line, as there is no space for response?
Sentences without punctuation?

 

I casually peruse modern poetry. Not enough to lend credibility to my opinions. Where is the form? What is the purpose?

 

What if I wished to convey . . .

Elliptical longing

Unrequited hatred

Fleeting terror

Beauty vanishing

Life un-cycling

Stagnant disinterest

Unexpected shivers

Dreams disjointed

Folding inward

Burrowing under

Vanishing in nearness

 

All I need is a clever title, and I can turn it in.

 

I had a poetry professor once who had to give grades to stuff like this.

 

He finished grading my stuff before the end-of-term party.

 

I stayed after every other student left.

 

Even the wrestler-turned-cowboy-poet I’d arrived with.

 

Instead of one door closing and another opening, it was just one door.

 

Months of fermenting lust and palpable possibility banished forever to the shabby hallway with threadbare carpeting.

 

Inside that door – within the assistant professor’s bland apartment – all became the realm of the mortal, the mundane.

 

A loss too great to sustain.

 

Our fictions, our fantasies, live large and lush. There is a moment, the briefest moment, dividing that which has not yet happened – – – from that which does.

 

That which never was – oh, here is poetry.

 

That which was – no, nothing here write about.