What is it that you don’t see
about omniscience, can’t wrap
your sight around? Sure, the point
of point of view is murky on days
where everyone wears blinders,
or seems to, epiphany not for the faint of heart;
still, there’s hope for the narrator who holds
the heavens up and the ground down,
shuffles past and present so easily. “Why
didn’t you,” my daughter once asked, “do something?”
when the something she wanted done
was undone already and out of sight/
mind, out of family, done not by or for
not-even-a-footnote me who no longer
writes stories for others—outsider-that-I-am
to my own life. But here is a pen for you
and you and you, the black ink
dark and indelible. Make me
believe in the need for revision
to re-see our lives. Start
with this blank page turned
at an angle. With my limited
omniscience, I beg you,
begin.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 21, Issue 4.
Marjorie Maddox has published 11 collections of poetry, the short story collection What She Was Saying (Fomite), four children’s books, and 550+ stories, essays, and poems in journals and anthologies. www.marjoriemaddox.com
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Emily Kerlin studied Creative Writing at Antioch College. She has been teaching the difference between “chicken” and “kitchen” to English Language Learners in public schools for the last 10 years. She lives in Urbana, Illinois with her husband, four teenagers and a geriatric brown dog.
Sara Backer’s first book of poetry, Such Luck (Flowstone Press 2019) follows two poetry chapbooks: “Scavenger Hunt” (dancing girl press) and “Bicycle Lotus” (Left Fork), which won the Turtle Island Poetry Prize. Her writing has been honored with residency fellowships from the Norton Island and Djerassi programs and with eight Pushcart nominations. She holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts.