after the death of Wislawa Szymborska
February 1, 2012
I take the petit four
of your poem and put
it in my mouth,
let my tongue soak it up—
soft words
dissolving
soft as a
spring weekend
—inhale the sugar flower.
The decadent scrim
of icing glosses over
everything.
The sun rises and the sun
sets and I eat
this cake and you are
no longer here. In this world
a violet grows at the edge
of yard and street,
efficiently crystallizes
into another poet’s
greedy panting
despite your vacant house,
your supercilious cat,
and your mouth that
will never eat cake again.
I am eating
cake and I am not
efficient. Pieces of your
poem clot against my teeth
and I cannot speak.
*
This poem was first published in Requiem Magazine and appears in both my chapbooks. I put it in both Girl + Muse and Lupercalia because I love it and the poetry of Wislawa Szymborska very much. Saying I love her work isn’t enough, really, but it’s the best I can do now.
When I was growing up, as a baby poet in college, surrounded by all the “great voices” my creative writing professors had raging boners for told me I had to read and respect because they were the great, white male voices, Szymborska kept me out of the mindset of conformity and academic elitism because she wrote about real struggle, real human suffering so perfectly. Her and Ginsberg.
Note: My grad school professors were much better than my college professors.
Here’s an article from the Poetry Foundation about the great WS.
Here’s my favorite poem by her.
*
Photo by Deva Williamson on Unsplash
I just want to say I know the cake in this picture isn’t a petit four. I scoured the internet looking for not copywritten pictures of petit fours and couldn’t find one that fitted my feelings. This cake works. If you have a picture of a gorgeous, yummy pastry, please share it with me. Thanks!
Check out my chapbooks here 🙂
