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2003-12-09 - 4:16 p.m.
Poetry is tedious and self-indulgent, which is why, of course, I like it.
An author I admire once said that poetry is much too personal for publication. "It's like showing someone your diaphragm or something," she said.
I laughed in my folding chair under the balcony.
Then I thought more about it.
I suppose you have to show people your diaphragm, your ugly, used-up bits, if you want to do anything at all.
Here is my bloody tampon, my infected spleen, my bitter thoughts. Here. For you.
Then people decide what they want to see. They get to pick, selectively, and form a vision of you.
Don't worry.
They will never see all of you.
Even if you show them, they can't see it all.
Grandma says its hard to see the forest for all those trees.
So its best to show the little things. Parts to resemble the whole.
Here are my mis-matched dishes, my swollen ankles, the layers of my fear.
Here are my secret dreams, my shaky hands, my stacks of paper. My eyes my socks my spare change my haphazard scrawl.
Here are all these pieces that make up me.
Here. You look at them.
You tell me what you see.
You will see something I don't understand and I will know something you can't comprehend. We will be strangers, but now, familiar.
We will wonder where we came from. And who is looking at us in the mirror.