Mollusks Are Forever

I don't usually enjoy the process of writing. I'm not sure if other writers do or not, but I hardly ever do. However, when I was between jobs in the summer of 2005 I started writing the poems that would be included in Submerged Structure. My writing process almost always begins not by writing, but by reading a pile of books. That summer I was reading Billy Collins and Richard Brautigan a lot, and it motivated me to move away from writing about the nitty gritty of sin I had chronicled in Flesh Wounds, and just write anything that came to mind. 

Mollusks Are Forever

This poem 
Is a bivalve 
That transforms 
Traffic altercations 
Into pearls 
And shit into Shinola, 
All while scuttling silently 
On the floors of silent seas.

This poem 
Is a tough customer 
That builds it’s own shelter, 
Is impervious to Helen 
Vendler’s criticism, 
And through a quirk of nature 
Has learned to go fuck itself.

But despite its hard exterior 
This poem is soft-hearted 
And wants nothing more than 
To give your wife a pearl necklace. 

Pin It