Finding the Poetry
By Hannah P., Shutesbury, MA
I'm thinking about what poetry is
A collage of emotions
Spit out and
Chewed up and
Crumpled
Into tiny paper balls that don't rhyme
And then I'm thinking
That this is my song
A monogram of my being
A taste of my life
Licked off my skin
Rolled in my tongue
Convalescent wonders
Stirred up by the poetic impulse
And now finally the papers are smooth
Uncreased
Stanza ridden
Syllable matching
Rhyming lines
And all I see is a fragile skeleton
Corroded and picked at
Eaten and devoid of fleshy truth
So I reach over
Into the wire basket
And spill out the ripped-up rejections
Unrhyming
Unmatched
And unpredictably phrased
And I smooth out the papers
Creased and smudged
Erased and rewritten
A messy montage
Of articulate painting and vomited anger
A mosaic of beauty and pain
My sweat and blood and tears
And here I am
Splayed out
In crimson froth
And angelic halos
Contorted and beautiful
Naked and composed
Fleshy and full
Of truth
And here is where
I find the poetry
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