sipping lemon Coke waiting
around for a beautiful day in this
class we will write toward the
terrain between poetry and fiction
there must be a way we can work
it out where the shape and tone
as always remind us over and over
that the line or sentence is just an
idea that I love him and miss him
that narrative is the notion of time
these last few weeks in that somber
place maybe he’s dead and
character’s shit when it comes down
to it sometimes he’s a jerk
the class will imagine and test out
why honest love is true and getting
a life perhaps is stupid or sometimes
storytelling works against itself
toward a knock-on-your-butt kind
of love that is rebuffed ten-fold
conventions are assumed intolerably
selfish oh to be fawned over in
linear progression do we have to
wait until after tax season for an
authentic voice which makes a novel
swinging in a sooty tire under an
elm tree at nighttime and later that
same big elm in the backyard bang-bang-
banging against my bedroom window
no one is here to soothe me except
the deafening cicadas now it’s dusk
and so as not to disturb his brothers
he sleeps dreams resolves to write
forever kicks at the mucky sand
watches paint peel off the back porch
