Clair Dunlap

Ars Poetica after watching hours of Robert Pattinson interviews

you absolutely cannot put the poem in a microwave, but you do &
the poem is the lightning bolt destroying the microwave.
the poem is a terrible experiment you believe in even as it twists out of your hands. 

it is impossible to tell if the poem is real or a bit, but it’s clear you made the poem
and the poem, as always, goes on to have a life of its own.

no one else will ever understand what you are doing
better than yourself.

let the poem make you laugh & don’t ask any questions of it.

what if, after all, the poem is just how you find joy in your own company?
what if the poem is lost as your computer dies in the middle of it?
what if you forget the plot of the poem completely? 
what if the poem was for no one else at all.

It’s sunny & the windows are open

and i was born tomorrow & i could cry! today we saw
the first crocuses and also the small white lilies with blue tongues
and tulip greens—tulip greens everywhere waiting for buds! a cat
waited patiently at a screen door, a pancake waited patiently on the stove
to be flipped, the ice waited patiently in the freezer to cool the lemonade glass
which waited patiently for my hand. twenty-eight years ago i
didn’t wait patiently for anything, but over time i have had to learn:

i wait in bed patiently for the sun to rise red, i listen at the window patiently
for the downy woodpecker to knock, i wait patiently at the sink for my whole hand
to be washed & then the other. every year, i dream of spring even though it isn’t
my favorite season, just the one during which i was born—
and i wait patiently to bear something, too. a poem or a bud or a body.