Challenging Poetry

what's a poem?

what's a poem?
she asks me, in the moments
before her piano lesson.

I tell her:
once I saw a man with a knife
turn a stick into a tiny, perfect gnome.

That's kind of what poetry is.

Imagine a mind full
of everything in a life—
ideas and stories, glitter and gunk,
shining stars and icky snot: a
carnage of thought—

If you prod at it
and cut at it, and whittle it away
until everything extra is gone
what you have left at the end
is a poem.

she says: I like it when
they rhyme, and runs off
to demonstrate a week of practicing
skipping up from middle C.

April 27—“Define” or “explain” something difficult, like a feeling or abstract concept…