Aspiring Poet by Dana Knott
What do I have to write about? Love?
I write only what I know, simple,
courtly poems full of indelible sorrows
and simple rhymes: dead, true, red, blue.
My cramped hand, its ink-spotted fingers,
scribbles words smudged, almost illegible,
like a verse of Tennyson I found wrapped
around a butter pat, reduced to domestic use.
I know these fragile creatures will not thrive.
I gave myself to parasitic love. I have little
blood to feed them. What I create always dies,
my creations delicate like blown glass that shatters
even from the resonance of a sigh.
Dana Knott’s writing has recently appeared in The American Journal of Poetry, Parhelion, Ethel Zine, FERAL, and Rejection Letters. Currently, she works as an academic library director in Ohio, and is the editor of tiny wren lit. You can follow her on Twitter at @dana_a_knott