I had put down in writing my fear of the war
I too pined for pastoral description
The blue of the water was the blue of the world

Newness does not, for me, equal satisfaction

A finite number of concentric rings I push out into space

A tedious fabric moving through time without malice

An act of oration, rebellion, inventory, fantasy

The sound of the earth closing its one good eye over me

Imagine: you reach out towards the margin's white hand

You do what your poems want and are clean

When you lay down your thorns you will be done

You do not take up arms against anyone


About this poem
"This poem considers the fantasy (the myth) of writing as a politically and ethically neutral force-how seductive to imagine that the act of writing is less sticky than acts in the world. Ultimately, how flawed."
-Wendy Xu

About Wendy Xu
Wendy Xu is the author of "Phrasis" (Fence Books, 2017). She teaches at The New School and lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.

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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) 2016 Wendy Xu. Originally published in Poem-a-Day, www.poets.org. Distributed by King Features Syndicate