Retired Poem

This is another poem that I've found doesn't seem to have a place anywhere but this blog. This one was written just weeks after I started graduate school at Emerson College and got (rightfully) panned in my first workshop.

This sonnet was the first piece that impressed my professor, Gail Mazur. In fact, it was the poem that opened up Self-Portrait In Fire when it was my graduate thesis. A few years later, I never sent it out much, and it was just another one of the many poems axed when Self-Portrait finally became a chapbook.

What can I say? Twelve years ago, I was neurotic, lacking confidence, too eager to impress, and mulling over relationships past as well as present. Today...well, alright, you could put most of that description in my blog profile today. Maybe I should change twenty-two to thirty-four in the last line.


"The" Poem

Start with the word “The” and work from there is my technique
for tonight, but there are no nouns or verbs to follow
my beginning, and I write more and more as an excuse to sneak
out of writing a letter to my ex-girlfriend who wants to know
answers I can’t even give myself. I think of the extra time I’ve gained
since I left her that Sunday, not even wanting to spend a third
of the week with her as we planned. How much have I really strained
to find my poetry again since then? I think of authors, the words
on their book jackets, listing their endless work. Did they conceive
their ideas out of isolation, rejecting their families as I may
be rejecting mine by moving to Boston, trying to believe
I won’t be lonely like the writers whose ideas I try not to take.
After many years and books, some write stories proving they had a life.
But at twenty two, I only want to prove that I can write.