Best of the Net 2013  



What Do I Know

for Michael Burkard

I was going to read your new book tonight going to start
on the balcony where I go to smoke standing next
to a square of light let out by the little window there
which gives enough to see if all the apartment lights are on
since I still haven't changed the bulb above the porch a waste
I know I was going to read but the snow was too strong
it blew right into the first few pages so I closed the book
and smoked with my back to the wind which felt
deliberate and defiant at the same time I mean the act
not the weather although I know either way works really
ten years ago I wrote "gushing self-pity" next to a poem
in one of your books I'm sorry ten years ago I thought I knew
everything about what poems should do now I know I know
very little and that it's better this way standing here in the dark

- Noah Eli Gordon (from Interrupture)





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