No Longer the Poet


I used to call myself a writer,
my words gathering on the roof as rain,

but I am no longer the poet
with hooves galloping over metaphors,
and nose dipping into the wellspring of inspiration.

My liberty is now a fat choke neck
as the year comes too late,
and winter keeps me mute and still.

I am barely a foot tapping somewhere,
a word to complicate, a broken similie,
a fire in your phrase that has been removed.

I have lost that thick thickness,
turning into a hand that cracks when pushed,
an isolato I have become.

How I long for
a thousand fingers to write with,

as I am
unhinged,

but always the glue,

the glue, the glue, that was never
the same as-- same as--
same as you.

Your poetry curves me at the waist,

and with this, I go into myself,
a shining spectacle of ill-tempered words,
piercing through this stubborn, unmoving sky

until the poem is complete.


April Michelle Bratten is an English major at Minot State University in Minot, North Dakota. She has recently been published in the online literary journals The Prick of the Spindle, Flutter Poetry Journal, and Sein Und Werden. She was also recently included in the Zygote Abstract 2008, which was released by Red Pulp Publishing. She currently co-edits the literary zine Up the Staircase.