How I Know There’s Magic In Poetry

in way of a response

because it can take the top off my head
without blade & without blood
and blade is not a blade
when it rhymes with glade or staid
—but stayed is staid

because white sand can make me shiver
and ice can turn my freckles into blisters
and ice is ice when it’s blended with espresso
and ice is ice is ice in (non)fiction
and ice
slants slice
into sluice
and the next time you see a pipe
pressed out over the sea
you see nothing’s the same again

because I have made the sun rise with lines that barely scan
on the edge of an industrial town
where the water isn’t blue or green or clear
-ly the kind you’d want to swim in

yet I did, and if my toes weren’t infected
when a mussel sliced them
that is poetry

and this is a translation
of a night that won’t be paraphrased
and if I get the lines just right
I’ll smell the salt & the you
who isn’t you
watching from the safe concrete

Related articles

• Overload Poetry Festival Fundraiser (lapkat.com)
• Poetry: The one that got away (lavieenroute.com)
• “Approaching poetry as something essential to our survival”: an interview with Sous Les Pavés editor Micah Robbins. (wewhoareabouttodie.com)
• What’s Up with Poetry? (ifimjuliet.wordpress.com)