Why am i asked? By Ellyssa Pearce

When someone asks me

How do I start a poem

                I don’t start

I just find a train of thought

And throw a lasso around the front

I follow it and let it pull my fingers

Around on the keyboard

Until meaning is found on the screen

Then I untangle the rope

                Put a period at the end

Title it with what it means

(even if the sense is none)

                Re read it

Hope to hear the clapping

From the trains passengers

Then off I send it.

Not much of a story

Is it?

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When I Am Asked

by Lisel Mueller

When I am asked

how I began writing poems,

I talk about the indifference of nature.

It was soon after my mother died,

a brilliant June day,

everything blooming.

I sat on a gray stone bench

in a lovingly planted garden,

but the day lilies were as deaf

as the ears of drunken sleepers

and the roses curved inward.

Nothing was black or broken

and not a leaf fell

and the sun blared endless commercials

for summer holidays.

I sat on a gray stone bench

ringed with the ingenue faces

of pink and white impatiens

and placed my grief

in the mouth of language,

the only thing that would grieve with me.