To celebrate National Poetry Month, The Poetry Box is sharing a Poem-of-the-Day, selected from various anthologies and individual poet collections that we have published over the years.
Please enjoy today’s selection: “Creative Writing 101” by Matthew Lane Brouwer, which appears in Verse on the Vine Anthology:
Creative Writing 101
I forget I know anything about writing poetry
I forget I have written 500 poems
I forget there is a box beneath my bed
with twenty dusty journals in it
I forget the binders in my desk
where I have stockpiled poems
like ICBM’s
I forget my transcript has a line on it which reads
“Creative Writing”
I forget I know the definitions of terms like
heroic couplet and nonrestrictive clause
I forget there is an open mic
I forget there is a darkened room
where I have read 50 times
I forget that there are 50 people in it
with the candlelight of expectation in their eyes
I forget the compliments I have received
I forget that I would like to receive more
I forget the title of the book I’m writing in my head
I forget the vision of seeing it on some Barnes and Noble shelf
I pour my breaths into a glass with ice in it
and sip them slowly like vermouth
I study the whiteness of the walls
until the minutes halt their drip
I ask the poem if it thinks it knows
who I am
and it replies
I am not a birth certificate
nor the name written in the blank
I am not a bottle of formaldehyde
in which to place the heart
I am not the scalpel
nor the surgeon’s well-trained hands
I am not a magistrate
nor the stone of his decrees
I am the pavilion through which the breeze
might freely blow
I am the hardwood floor
on which the wedding parties dance
I am the mesh through which the sun
can peek its skull
I am the lattice up which the climbing vine ascends
I am the dissipation of the cloud
into tiny drops of rain
I write down the last shape
I think it takes
Put out an empty glass
wait to see what it collects
