Were There More Time
And less infestations
I might continue to go
Through the alphabet again
Call my misreading my mis-prison
At the trial you were the one who said
I read Jewish
You know, it’s usually not one person
Who gets to decide what is centered
Her marrying into the Hurt family
Is not the same as who hurt this family
For me, it’s not until lots of people
Start texting me about it
If you think the rhyme scheme
Or pattern is something, that’s because
This is a kind of pantoum, it is already
Making graves
From a vocabulary of
If the therapy sessions
Have nothing to do
With the
When each broken sentence
Describes more than an image, like Rivers
I was easy for them to name
When I was a child I was easily
Identified among the others–
Even before I knew there were poems, I knew I’d be late
For revision. I never liked the workshop
When we were doing it. I am still trying
To get over my anger, I know
If I can make my enemy laugh
He cannot bludgeon me. Yes,
He can describe a gentler Holocaust
Than I might. Accept an apology
Even if you wait too many years
Throw the Russian articles out
Hear war at every shore
When an image has a little problem
I’ll resist naming
The turn like the final son
Rereading this line instead
The hinges have been known
To break the histograms
If either war or worry
Looking one way we see
A face, but the other
And it’s a vase
Never with flowers
Not a sequence of metaphors
About the circuit
But a machine that keeps busy
Focusing on the part of the eye
That is not an eye
Sum of fallers I didn’t draw on
The warrior’s response for
The sides are already taken
The doorway is already cold
I’d wound the weary traveler
Up in mother’s weavings
Worried the woodpecker would
Find harm in every choice
If you participate
In relationships
If you forgot
The rules
If the institution
Is an agenda itself
If an obstacle
Divides us into us
If you find trees
Inside the book
If the end in itself
Needs a library in house
If enemy land owner
remind me to relax
If listing rules is not a document
no poet will trouble
If you do not know your field
You are not in the field
If no family is expected
to write a poem
If a quiet nursery will never have
a baby, but there is a baby
If readers are a badland
the very bad train arrives still
If we are giving up
stop, no actually, more go
If it’s an actual fire
the army passes the neighbor by
If the compromise is a plan
to punish
If losing
don’t request your privileged accommodations
If a monument
can’t be called visible, a sword
If the work starts
not being like habit
If truly you think it would help
I’ll stop the role-assigning
