Ars Poetica

By Dorothea Lasky b. 1978 Dorothea Lasky

I wanted to tell the veterinary assistant about the cat video Jason sent me

But I resisted for fear she'd think it strange

I am very lonely

Yesterday my boyfriend called me, drunk again

And interspersed between ringing tears and clinginess

He screamed at me with a kind of bitterness

No other human had before to my ears

And told me that I was no good

Well maybe he didn't mean that

But that is what I heard

When he told me my life was not worthwhile

And my life's work the work of the elite.

I say I want to save the world but really

I want to write poems all day

I want to rise, write poems, go to sleep,

Write poems in my sleep

Make my dreams poems

Make my body a poem with beautiful clothes

I want my face to be a poem

I have just learned how to apply

Eyeliner to the corners of my eyes to make them appear wide

There is a romantic abandon in me always

I want to feel the dread for others

I can feel it through song

Only through song am I able to sum up so many words into a few

Like when he said I am no good

I am no good

Goodness is not the point anymore

Holding on to things

Now that's the point

Dorothea Lasky, "Ars Poetica" from Black Life. Copyright © 2010 by Dorthea Lasky. Reprinted by permission of Wave Books.

Source: Black Life (Wave Books, 2010)

Biography

Dorothea Lasky was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri. She earned a BA at Washington University and an MFA at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She has published two collections of poetry, AWE (2007) and Black Life (2010), as well as several chapbooks, including the polemical Poetry Is Not a Project (2010). Her poems have appeared in a number of prominent publications, including the New Yorker, Paris Review, and . . .

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