[Critique Group 1] Mary-Jo Poem for next week with Attachment

[Mary-Jo Lord]

I Lost My Ordinary Poem About Ordinary Things

Somewhere in my Every Day Life

 

As I sleep a poem
writes itself in my subconscious mind.
Hour after hour, 
my masterpiece takes form.



It's an ordinary poem about appreciation of
life's discoveries and experiences. Maybe:

it's about how the YETI has improved my quality of life,

my memorable Saturday in 1993 when I was
confined to a small house with a senile golden retriever and a cat in heat,
or
the fine art of serious swiping of Twitter feeds while
listening to a cab driver argue with himself about
the best strategy for roundabout navigation.

 

The alarm clock announces, "It's six O'clock a.m."
with all the charm of a screen reader. No time in my

morning rituals to Write down

dreams. Somewhere in the typical happenings of an
ordinary day, my poem is lost.

 

Stanzas go out with the morning mail, are
folded neatly in a secret pocket of my son's backpack, and
slip out the car window as I head west on Hamlin Road.

 

Lines slide down the drain with the
breakfast dishwater, attach themselves to
email messages, and walk out the door with my
10 and 11 o'clock appointments.

 

Words are accidentally
deleted, swallowed unspoken along with a
cafeteria cheese burger and fries, and
return home to dictionary.com.

 

Letters change present tense to
past and future and leave
nothing for today. And finally,

that crucial, poignant line break, the one that I
tossed and turned over for hours,
until I was sure it was In the right place
skipped off merrily to the land of the forever lost,
snug and secure in the toe of a missing sock.

 

This leaves one solitary exclamation point
to capture the true essence and
drive the meaning home.

 

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