Dear Wallace, “You were only here because”

Julie Choffel
| poetry

 

You were only here because

at some point someone made space for you

 

I too want a predictable home

so I can do whatever I want

but for you and for me this

translates differently

 

what people don’t realize is

form is personal

for women form it’s a kind of ending you know

we birth ourselves over and over

after each little death

an army of me

 

maybe we’re only reinventing

capital

like music and flowers

 

to know work by another name

 

to know the names of love

 

to love the un-

doing

I mean we can’t even agree

if resources are fixed or infinite

 

let me tell you

a resource is just a pocket

a rupture in the pattern

when the mothers part the waters

and everyone runs through

Julie Choffel is the author of The Hello Delay (Fordham, 2012) and two chapbooks, Figures in a Surplus (Achiote, 2010) and The Chicories (Ethel, 2019). Her poems can also be found in Painted Bride Quarterly, Southern Humanities Review, the tiny, Phoebe, and The Wallace Stevens Journal, among others. She teaches creative writing at the University of Connecticut.

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