He says that I write poems
like a goddamn epileptic:
words senses images thoughts
spasmodic against the blinding page.
And while it is true that I have a knack for blurring
the razored contrast of the truth,
there is something to be said for the seizure of the soul,
for a feeling does not feel unless it burns beneath the skin.
Besides: some memories are too sharp to wrap in tidy packaging;
my teeth shatter against the words, and suddenly
the moment is like the floor on Christmas morning:
a gift nested in shreds of pretty paper.
The poems aren’t real unless I tear the facts apart—
unless I shiver and shake and forget and distort.
Sometimes when I recall what was said, or what it meant,
or why, time stops
and twists,
and I cannot help it.
He says that I am bad at remembering,
but I am simply wont to listen
to the humming of my honest bones,
the grapes gossiping in my head,
the bees stinging my fingertips,
the waves crashing in my heart.
Therein lies a different truth, more true
than what my eyes have seen, or what my ears have heard,
and I am impossibly fascinated with
the turbulent, tangible world.
I am a poet, not a historian;
everything I’ve ever written may very well be false.
He reads each line and says I am a liar,
but I do it for art’s sake.
HUNTER LINAR 