after Alberto Rios
We give because we are broken
We give because we are mending
We give because our lip is bruised
We give because she smiled
Giving is wrinkled
It has no teeth
It mocks the meat it feeds on
then eats the bread of contrition
It grows when cut-
not like a zero-sum apple pie
It spills everywhere
like a poor woman’s jar of oil
It goes bad every morning
if hoarded overnight
It must be wasted
like nard on a poor man’s feet
We give because of that
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 22, Issue 4.
Mark Watney’s first poem was published in a 1976 anthology of the best high school poetry in South Africa. Four decades later he published his 2nd poem– at the age of 56. And now, at age 60, he says he may have hit his stride. “My brain is slowing down,” he admits, “yet seems to have finally acquired a certain poetic sensibility–perhaps as a consolation in old age. Or perhaps I just needed 56 years to understand what TS Eliot meant when he said that ‘Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion.’”
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