Waiting to Write the Great American Poem
I'm not writing much these days,
I should be worried
but I'm not, I'm just standing in line
for a Mel Gibson movie,
waiting for the water to boil,
I'm a cow in calf, a tree whose apples
don't yet bend the bough.
I'm a taxi driver on a New York Saturday
night, a cold front headed for the Rockies.
I'm the ground-swell
of a great political movement
and I can't help thinking that I'm gonna rock
the nation, like the five year old
who just learned how to read,
the kid whose training wheels are history.
I'm a sure thing, baby, the monsoon season
about to hit.
I mean I'm a poet. I can hear ants
angling across the front walk.
I have ink in my veins, good night vision,
I'm double-jointed, I tell you,
I can deal with my arrhythmia.
And I'm the latest volume of the OED, the Christine
Columbus of the blank page, been
training in Kenya, running barefoot through
mountains, I can think with both sides
of your brain. So keep an eye out, baby,
keep an ear out. Take the bet cause
I'm a sure thing.
I'm the rookie pitcher. They can't hit me yet.
Deborah Bogen
Deborah Bogen is an east LA County poet who advocates free immunizations for all children. Her work's appeared in the Santa Monica Review, the Journal of the American Medical Association, the Woodstock Journal, Mudfish and other journals and is forthcoming in the Pittsburgh Quarterly, Sandhill Review, Buckle & Magazine and others. She's a member of the Doug Anderson writing group in Claremont, CA.