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.