The lack of a single-word infinitive
in our language is what is killing me

this morning
A single word for all
infinitives is what God is doing tonight

This is just one of many acts
to have passed through the garden

Previously on this show they put
a peacock back together wrong

after its demise
Something
there was in the syntax

Poor bird could feel it in his bones



About this poem
"Sometimes-often-when I sit down to write, I become deeply conscious of all the other words/ideas/minds/bodies that have inhabited the space before me. In this poem I deal with that awareness by abandoning myself and god to give a brief (incomplete, inaccurate) recap of poetry thus far, as if it were a television show starring Wallace Stevens, Robert Frost and a peacock. I wanted to find out what happens when they stop being polite and start getting etc., but they all turned out to be pretty genteel."
-Heather Christle

About Heather Christle
Heather Christle is the author of "What Is Amazing" (Wesleyan University Press, 2012). She lives in Yellow Springs, Ohio.

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The Academy of American Poets is a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, whose aim is to make poetry available to a wider audience. Email The Academy at poem-a-day[at]poets.org.

(c) 2014 Heather Christle. Originally published by the Academy of American Poets, www.poets.org. Distributed by King Features Syndicate