Poem-a-Day

Poem-a-day

Poem haunted by the sound of a long e

I’ve never been able to tell this story.
I was wooed by my favorite writer in 1990.
We met in the faculty lounge of her university in the city.
She offered me three free years of writing poetry.
She tried to charm me as I ate my meal silently.
I didn’t say my boyfriend had begun behaving violently.
I didn’t say I was carrying what might become a baby.
I didn’t want to be the kind of person who inspired pity.
I never thanked her for the opportunity.
It wouldn’t be the last time he hit me, although I left him eventually.
After the procedure, the report: female, no genetic abnormality.
For decades, I wouldn’t think about what might have been, if only.
The poems I might have written. And the girl. Her body.
An animal that’s trapped will do what’s necessary.

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Kerry Sherin Wright

Previous Poems

Title	Author	Date
As to Why We Will Not Stop (Making the Hats)	Sophie Cabot Black	04/07/2017
Dirt Being Dirt	Carl Phillips	04/06/2017
Self-Portrait as the Bootblack in Daguerre’s Boulevard du Temple	Robin Coste Lewis	04/05/2017
A Place in the Country	Toi Derricotte	04/04/2017
The Perfect Poem	Kaveh Akbar	04/03/2017
If I Had Known	Alice Dunbar-Nelson	04/02/2017
The Glory of the Day Was in Her Face	James Weldon Johnson	04/01/2017
They Ate the Bulbs of Tulips	Mark Wagenaar	03/31/2017
Syllabus for the Dark Ahead	Jehanne Dubrow	03/30/2017
Abandoned Block Factory, Arkansas	Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers	03/29/2017

Title

Author

Date

As to Why We Will Not Stop (Making the Hats)

Sophie Cabot Black

04/07/2017