In my bones, I am a poet
And every word I trail shows it
Like a fingerprint to trace
Conjures an image of my face.

Any essays, I might write
With golden flourish, thrilling heights
With wide crescendos, rumbling frisson
Soft like silk and smooth like ribbon.

So when my teacher does request
A lab report or written test
I may bring tears to their eyes—
Still, I did not get it right.

1
To suspend
A summer day in glass.
Complaisant green,
This blade of grass.

2
To give away
Grief, unfeel a caress,
Nourish a hunger
For emptiness.

3
To insinuate
to love’s unanswered skin
syllables of desire
pricking in.

4
To build
a terrace of form,
inside the weather of confusion,
a private storm.

5
To wander
through rooms of the mind
searching for enchanted objects.
What do I have to find?

6
To mark
against the slippage
of another year
that we are here.