Poem: "What Do I Want"

What Do I Want

well I want to
get better

—Marie Ponsot, “Simples”


The oldest living woman poet in the country
is listening to a youthful edition of herself
talk about illness in a poem about the mole.

Its dark abnormality. Its busy digging to fit
its body into the ground. Star-shaped nose.

And she whose poems are musical and easy
is hacking and hacking into bunched tissues.
She is allergic to spring, the old poet explains,

after you end with Survival is a bitter malady.

for LB

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