November

by Daniel Poppick

I think I might hate poetry right now,
I texted a friend from my cubicle.
That’s perfect iambic pentameter,
She replied, go write a fucking sonnet.
Fine. I’m learning the words that leave my mouth
Can up and cross themselves out, like a rose
So privatized it reverses its smell,
Redness inhaled directly from the bud
Into the obsequious sniffer’s face.
Or putting it another way, I think
Poetry is both abstract crime and crime,
Better than love and worse, a waste of time,
A blunt force way of running down the clock,
A sleep that doubles as distant hoofbeats.

Published on May 19, 2021