Ink
I hate
it—smell of pigment, drops
running
through my fingers. Anyway,
My bed, was
a guest room stuck between
my
grandfather’s music collection in a closet
and the
bathroom. Every spring we talked.
I called it “cutting,”
since words tended to relieve.
But this is
a poem about ink. My mother,
she used to
cut with her voice along.
“Writing is
your past time,” she’d say.
My notebook
was a water pail in a hole.
“Never let
your tongue drench your words,”
my
grandfather said. Another cut. Another
when he barged
in my room, and the door
hit my ink
pot. Black splotches on my bedspread.
His tongue,
black as the ink on my quill, ready
to spit.
“Why the hell you want to waste your life?”
The last day
he cut, he lacquered over the porch.
It’s still
there, I bet, just waiting to be cut.
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