Amy Lowell Prize, selected by Moira Linehan
This Poem Can’t Poem Today
It expects more. It has formal education. It wants fanfare,
lust, pressed flowers, illustration in changing light, sculpted
language popping from backdrops of changing seasons,
draperies of desire. It needs to be read to exhaustion. Or
combustion. It wants a throaty yell. To go on and on like
poetic phenomenon. Wants you to look across the room,
question its tone & intentions & think about underwear.
Wants you to take it to bed & gaze in wonder over pancakes.
Sometimes, secretly, this poem wants you to lose it. To look &
gawk & own oblivion like an animal left out. As if kinship could
save. Like memory is home, any sound signaling entry. This poem’s
not solid shelter, but it’s bulking up. It considers itself a gift,
a penance, a warped reality, a bonfire burning desire to ash,
a balancing act. Also, it hates labels. There’s nothing this poem
won’t do for acceptance. It loves being shared or hoarded, eats
up secret gloating, wants eyes continually. Wants to be left alone with
chips & dip. There’s little this poem wouldn’t do if asked nicely.
There’s nothing created without a sense of dread or obligation.
It’s pathetic in its angry, erratic needs arranged precisely,
left-justified like nothing ever is. Watch it go on, losing traction,
slickly dodging definition & structure. Sick with not knowing
what it really is. Or why it should care. Or the proper protocol for
announcing disaster & definition among others. Such simple words
for want. This poem can’t stop any shy ache, won’t search any abandoned
alley at night to find you. It can’t quite provide friendship, though it tried.
This poem sometimes feels screwed. Or necessary. Every line’s a warning.
Or a point of entry. Tomorrow this might look more like a love story.
Another anthem to anxiety. Come back & see if it cares. Come back
Jen Edwards
Jennifer R. Edwards, is the author of Unsymmetrical Body (Finishing Line Press, 2022). She’s a poet and speech-language pathologist in Concord, NH. Her poems received Pushcart Prize nomination, support from Palm Beach Poetry Festival & Colgate Writers Conference, and appear or are forthcoming in many anthologies and literary mags including Mom Egg Review, Terrain, Remington Review, Racket, Literary Mama, and Snapdragon. Twitter @Jennife00420145 Contact and read more poems at: https://linktr.ee/JenEdwards