Latest Poem: What Poems Are (first line from "With Mercy From The Greedy," Anne Sexton)

May 13, 2009
8:49 am

What Poems Are

"This is what poems are:"
sticky blood oozing
from open wounds and
so much salty moisture
staining previously dry cheeks.
They are words uttered and muttered
that should've been left unsaid.
They are a glance, a touch, a caress,
a whisper in the stillness of night,
the inky blackness, a whisper
never heard and yet
still absorbed into the enormity
of existence. They are
the sobs that wrack bodies when thought to be
unheard and the laughs cackled regardless
of who's doing the hearing. They are
all our terms of endearment and
our epithets and curses and
exclamations of scorn and
pity. They leak out onto the page
every instance of daily existence,
recording it for posterity and yet
tranforming the ordinary
into something extraordinary.

copyright 2009 Katherine Andrews