Curl

No longer at home in the world
and I imagine
never again at home in the world.

Not in cemeteries or bogs
churning with bullfrogs.
Or outside the old pickle shop.
I once made myself
at home on that street,

and the street after that,
and the boulevard. The avenue.
I don’t need to explain it to you.

It seems wrong
to curl now within the confines
of a poem. You can’t hide
from what you made
inside what you made

or so I’m told.
 

Credit

Copyright © 2021 by Diane Seuss. This poem originally appeared in The New York Review of Books, November 18, 2021. Used with permission of the author.