03.25.20

ANATOMICAL SPRING

if I say this poem is a letter

like magic then this letter is a poem

like this endless empty field is a stage

and this state is not a field, like this letter-poem

messes up the magic and glamour of the grammar

and all we’re left with is the next thing we see

ancient Roman poets used to write 11-syllable lines

recently I heard of poems that are like Mars Bars

let’s write a poem that’s shaped like spring!

or say things that look like circles, did you ever

eat lichen to stave off starvation? or dreamed you

were a bird?

_____

(this is the letter)

Dear Lea,

an anagram of my name is “bent dream eatery.” I

should’ve put that in the poem-letter. Dave Brinks

found it for me. A letter contains what you forgot

to put in the poem. Don Yorty’s poems I think of as

letters, that’s how I read them, for me though, a

letter is something that Phil doesn’t have to type on

the computer. “Mayer” isn’t a Dactyll but an Iamb,

wait it’s a trochee, unstressed altogether so each

syllable is actually unstressed, the sun’s out but I

already took a walk, where do you walk these days?

Love,

Bernadette

p.s. I should have said: Dear editrix