Titles
Movies and houses demand only one
and none but the fussiest book,
the kind with a supercilious slant
to the font of its chapter headings,
dreams of having a second.
Why, then, do all my poems
preen themselves in front of the mirror,
trying first one title and then another,
discards piling up on the white tiles?
I tell them it doesn't matter,
that no peacock-feathered finery
can disguise the flabbiness
of an aging stanza,
that no one will mistake them
for the raw voice of revolution
even if they squeeze
into a single anguished grunt.
But they can't stop dreaming,
begging for one more costume,
one more chance at becoming
more than they are.
(First published in Ship of Fools)
122nd Weekly Poetry Contest