Meredith Alexander
Remembrance, or the Lives of Poems
Poems like little cakes
wrapped up in cellophane.
See clear to the center,
crème-filled, or into a heart
of nuts and marshmallows
and caramel chunks. Poems
covered in tin-foil like chocolate
Easter eggs. Opaque, gooey,
viscous almost, all one
consistency that may just
melt between your teeth—
it’s a matter of taste.
Poems poured into shot-glasses.
Sharp green, thick like jello,
barely transparent, guilty pleasure.
Poems piled up in a fruit-basket,
ripening on a window sill
somewhere. So wholesome, so round.Then poems with feelings,
with spirits. Poems with souls
immortal yet still fearful of
death or of embarrassment.And poems without homes,
floating icons on a computer screen,
poems lost to society, poems
imprisoned, poems
in limbo.