“So,”
the writing teacher asked the class,
“who is the ‘you’
in this poem?”
I knew, of course,
the you was me.
When isn’t it?
But who wants to confess
that
in a grad school
poetry workshop?
Too much insecurity
disguised by arrogance
and pretentious blather
to speak to any truth
in writing. It’s just easier
to shift person, than
to use the all seeing I,
even when cloaked
in irony and unreliability.
No one believes that crap
about the speaker and the poet
anyway. Everyone knows
the truth, but won’t admit it;
because then the expectation
would be for the writer, you,
to explain ad nauseam your poem,
that no one understands,
(Not even you). This unraveling
of the poem tediously happens too often
in poetry workshops. I blame
years of literary analysis
for this phenomenon:
What else does one do,
but explain poetry?
So,
please tell us the vaguely ordinary event
that you turned into vaguely
poetic phrasing
which you are now explaining
in a vaguely ordinary way,
so that we may say
we share the extraordinary
epiphany you experienced
in the most mundane manner
and during the most mundane event
of your extraordinarily mundane day
and that you— truthfully, when
all is said and done, which sorrowfully
will not be done soon enough—
,you did not in reality have.
Are you
as tired of all
this subterfuge
as am I?
You are,
And I am.
(August 6, 2024)
subtext 