A poem a day in April from Rutgers English PhD students and friends.

Friday, April 17, 2015

Spell for List Making

Save them all           I think every time
I find a piece of scrap paper in a seasonal jacket.

Last year's grocery list in last year's
pen color gives you a secret to a life

you blurred your way through. How poignant
all the yogurts she used to buy.

Or the list of ideas for the collaboration
that is so clearly now its own poem

because you didn't know he would die
when you wrote turning 30 in prison

and it was a dark joke then
and it's a darker joke now.

Or the letter for the revolution
telling the life-giving properties of salt—

pounds and pounds and pounds
of flour, rice, beans in the pantry

because you can't see what's coming
and the past always seems so startlingly

to belong
to someone else.

2 comments:

  1. finding a scrap of paper in a seasonal jacket: GREAT occasion for a poem. I love Spring jackets, too. happy thought.

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