The Buddhists & Beats alike
pray at the altar of first
thoughts in the temple of
spontaneity and its deep-
seated mistrust of
revision: what you see
is what you see. Don’t blink.
On stage, a poet reads
crafted, lush poems,
her words echoing in the nearly-
empty church until
each syllable begins
to disconnect, sounds
with their own life,
guttural gestures without
context or meaning, sunlight
breaking through
stained glass: a single moment,
defined no longer in relation
to others but by
its difference,
the shrine of whatever
comes next, the way
I pull an old poem
from a dusty drawer
and find that, long ago,
it knew more
about me than I knew myself,
like a sentence
that might take many years
to even think about finishing.