Please enjoy these two poems from Bart Edelman, which use wry humor to explore the questions we often ask ourselves. Is life about distraction or reassurance? How can writing both create and destroy? Take a look and see what this ignites in you.
—The Editors
For Sanity’s Sake
Tried controlling my life—
One poem at a time—
And it seemed to work.
But then a random stanza
Came to me in distress.
Said for sanity’s sake
It needed more blank space—
Something about conformity,
And that was that.
Soon I found trouble
Everywhere I turned.
Caesura came calling in a cab.
Scared the dickens out of me.
I was a metonymical mess—
Alliteratively speaking, of course.
Chaos closed the door
Before I could even warn
The couplet kissing in the dark.
So I gave up verse entirely.
Never wrote another word again.
Not any worse for it—
Give or take an ode or two.
What I Can Do for You Today
Offer to dial it back.
Listen with my good ear.
Create a new diversion.
Predict the upcoming storm.
Do my impression of Churchill.
Agree not to sing.
Purchase a lottery ticket.
Play the piano backwards.
Take out the garbage.
Whip up a tart.
Wax the neighbor’s cat.
Fetch the Ouija board.
Joke about the stiletto.
Mix a White Russian.
Call off the goons.
Reveal a secret of mine.
Promise it will all be okay.
Bart Edelman’s poetry collections include Crossing the Hackensack, Under Damaris’ Dress, The Alphabet of Love, The Gentle Man, The Last Mojito, The Geographer’s Wife, Whistling to Trick the Wind, and This Body Is Never at Rest: New and Selected Poems 1993 – 2023. He has taught at Glendale College, where he edited Eclipse, a literary journal, and, most recently, in the MFA program at Antioch University, Los Angeles. His work has been anthologized in textbooks published by City Lights Books, Etruscan Press, Harcourt Brace, Longman, McGraw-Hill, Prentice Hall, the University of Iowa Press, Wadsworth, and others. He lives in Pasadena, California.
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I like the idea in ‘for sanity’s sake’ that poems have a mind of their own,
‘Tried controlling my life—
One poem at a time—
And it seemed to work.
But then a random stanza
Came to me in distress.’