The guy from the attorney general’s office
blamed the nouns, sources of all trouble—
people, places, things.
Combined with certain verbs—
assault, distribute, trespass and possess—
these nouns form gangs of complex sentences,
fragments of lives half-lived and run-ons
rambling through the detritus of car crash lives.
The simplest, though, tell of kids locked up,
looking out at the free, positions of attention
in the parking lot, half-listening
to mockingbirds refining their own syntax
as they mimic the ringing fire alarm
while we wait to go back inside
where we’ll try, again, writing
sentences that don’t mimic the past,
sentences that aren’t destinies.
6 Comments | Filed under: poems and poetry and teaching | Tagged: poems
I love this.
Thanks, Deb.
me, too.
especially “sentences that aren’t destinies”
Thanks, Angie.
brilliant, very clever
Thank you, Crafty Green Poet.