If this is the last poem I will ever write
I do not want to fall back on The List
(Apache, Italian, White-appearing, biracial, 
bipolar, old, fat, ex-punk, ex-husband, 
ex-corporate, ex, ex, ex…cetera) again,

hanging all I’ve become
on any or all of those hooks
at one time.  Not for the last poem.
They’re what I was and will soon no longer be;
to speak of them again seems to be

more cling than release. When you look back
from a poet’s last poem, you ought to be able to see
the bright peaks and sludge valleys of all the others
in the light from the last one; it ought to be hard
to look directly into a last poem.  It should burn.

If this is the last poem I will ever write
I should deny my categories.  As I could not even now,
this cannot be the last poem.  If this had been the last poem
I was destined to write, the poem would already be burning,
and I would have leaped or should now be preparing to leap through it.

What the reader should be doing with this one
is up to the reader.  Some would tell you a poet
should never write about writing a poem.  Those people will turn away
without realizing that this is not a poem about writing a poem.