Glenn Ingersoll
seven poems
This poem is just like
wall, but push it, and
find its give. It is opening.
As you push, it gives in.*
This poem is absolutely
quiet. In its making
there were little scratches
you might’ve heard as it
moved away from the
pen. But it got here,
the place it made for,
when the pen let it go,
silence and more.*
Word by word, comma, trope,
this poem weaves a nest.
From the stuff of its body it cushions
the center for what will be born there.
Here, within this poem a quickening,
like the flutter of tongue against
a concave palate. Like the light
that comes in at the parting of the lips.
Something inside this poem, if you believe it,
will not die. And you needn’t believe it.
You do not need to be here.
The nest won’t have room for you, even curled up.
Or in a cuckoo’s egg.
Within the circumference of its nest
the poem’s going about making. And here we are
at the rim looking in. It’s not at all
bothered, going about its business.
But, really, it doesn’t mind being the center
of attention, does it? I think, no.*
If this were a poem
you would feel your heart
sitting up and listening, and,
though it doesn’t understand
words exactly, your heart
would be attending
to the voice, which sounds
like your voice. Maybe that
really is you, thinks the heart.
Something must be going on.
What?*
This poem makes no effort
to stir the emotions, hopes
rather, that they will settle,
as, at the bottom of the cup,
there is the fine powder
from the teabag, the
tea cooling.*
This is a poem because it
hates poems. It wanted to
get inside a poem and eat
it from the inside until it
replaced the poem’s material,
until this, which hates,
took over what place the poem
made for itself, the space in
thought, mouth, the page’s
darkening. So, now, this
wears the clothes of the poem,
is stretched on the poem’s bed
looking up at the poem’s light;
and hates itself, a success.*
This is the fourth poem
I have written today. The poem
did not arrive volunteer. Rather, it is a
conscripted poem, dressed in an ill-fitting
suit, looking sullen. And, of course, it wants to be
somewhere else, poor thing. But this poem, the fourth
I’ve written today and so something of an also-ran,
waits to do its service. If it’s not ready,
anyway, it’s here.