Julie Benesh ~ Two Poems

Intro to Poetry

We find it an awful thing to meet peo­ple
seri­ous or not, who have turned into vacant
effec­tive peo­ple… —William Stafford, “Introduction to Literature”

Look: poet­ry is no line of work for career-
ists, despite how promis­ing it must appear.
Words are free, but work­shops pricey,
and writ­ing as time-con­sum­ing as cod­ing,
with a much worse return on invest­ment.

It looks like a form of con­tent cre­ation
but with pre­ten­tious line breaks,
even enjamb­ment. But that’s the least
of it. Content is a com­pli­ment or at best
a com­ple­ment to the pre­vail­ing dis­course;

poet­ry a cor­rec­tion, admo­ni­tion,
rebuke. It dares to exist against
the code of con­duct. It swerves,
but nev­er for rev­enue, or secu­ri­ty,
or celebri­ty. It’s a rid­dle

that lands again and again:
the impulse, the attempt,
the click, the recep­tion,
the next one,
and so on.

~

The Prompt

Start with an imper­a­tive,
fol­lowed by a ques­tion.
See what I did there?

Follow up with a vehi­cle
dis­guised as a tenor.

Unpack and extend it with a sim­i­le;
like a bicy­cle dis­guised as a singing mes­sen­ger,
a Tesla dis­guised as a Nazi, a pair of hik­ing boots
dis­guised as a sui­cide.

Mention a glow­ing orb in the night sky
or a sym­met­ri­cal pow­dery gauze cloud
in the day; an organ that squirts blood,
fills with love and occa­sion­al­ly mur­ders
its host; or that ani­mat­ing prin­ci­ple
that lives for­ev­er, with­out using the words
m____n, h____t or s___l.

But now it’s time
for that abrupt
yet nat­ur­al tran­si­tion
known as the turn:

express your obses­sions
freely here, and con­sid­er
their shad­ows. Now

click your con­trap­tion
shut or blow it open.

It’s all the same
in the end.

~

Julie Benesh is recip­i­ent of an Illinois Arts Council Grant and grad­u­ate of Warren Wilson College’s Program for Writers. Her writ­ing can be found in Bestial Noise: A Tin House Fiction Reader, Tin House mag­a­zine (print), Crab Orchard Review, Florida Review, Gulf Stream, Hobart, Cleaver, JMWW Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, and many oth­er places. Read more at juliebenesh.com and reach her at juliebnsh@gmail.com.