Titles
by Mary Soon Lee
Movies and houses demand only one
and none but the fussiest book,
the kind with a supercilious slant
to the font of its chapter headings,
dreams of having a second.
     
Why, then, do all my poems
preen themselves in front of the mirror,
trying first one title and then another,
discards piling up on the white tiles?
     
I tell them it doesn't matter,
that no peacock-feathered finery
can disguise the flabbiness
of an aging stanza,
that no one will mistake them
for the raw voice of revolution
even if they squeeze 
into a single anguished grunt.
But they can't stop dreaming,
begging for one more costume,
one more chance at becoming
more than they are.

(First published in Ship of Fools)

 

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