FORE WORD
With such sour talk, your ends will come.
Also mine; also ours.
That cold hour must stay then; rain must blow,
snow fall fast down.
What eats more than this wind, time, what lets less pass?
Into this list fits
soon, with real, leap, shed, wept, weep, ways,
rage, ages, away, sins,
went, stir, torn, told, gold, fled, fond,
held. Also, all’s well that ends
well. Urge, sent, mend. Your hand, nose, neck,
body, head, stay ones here,
when arms, legs, feet, ears, eyes, lips twin.
Also here – most rude, most dear – your skin.
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In this poem, I started with the simple conceit of using only four-letter words. There were four people in the household I grew up in, and four has always been a special number to me: square, sound and open.
The part of me that has never grown up also enjoys invoking bad language without actually using any.
Originally published in Westerly 59.1: 185
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