Continued.

Lately, ladies, I can hear the scratching
In the evening. Someone’s itching to write in the graveyard
On your literary tombstone: “She wasn’t capable
Of sustained ambition.” What’s my problem, anyway?
I am not writing the autobiography that includes
Annoying Romances with Giants and Would-Be Giants
I am not writing an article which Anoints
Or Disparages, I am keeping and hiding the drunken
Bodies; I am not writing the tell-all nor the epic.
I’m afraid my eyeballs are rather small, after all.
I saw genius expanded by flattery and gin.
It was like learning that nations were shapes kings picked.
I had no domestic gifts, was left to muddle in the middle.
I am not writing the treatise or the treaty. Or the treatment—
Shards, baby. Shards of the numinous.

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Mara Jebsen teaches at New York University. She received her MFA from NYU and BA from Duke University. Mara holds a New York Foundation for the Arts award in poetry and her book, The White Year, was a finalist for the Jake Adam York prize with Milkweed Editions. Her work can be found in the American Poetry Review, Hanging Loose Press, jubilat, and in other journals. She was raised in Lome and in Philadelphia.