Known Quantity
So it turns out you want
____________to know nothing
______and it frightens me.
It means you must
________know enough already.
For example, you must
_______know I’m calibrated
________________________to sit stiff
with my hands in my lap like flowers
______meant for someone who’s just done
____a tremendous job.
Someone’s just done a dance
_________with all of her strong arms
and legs in the air.
________________Someone’s just done
_____a big trombone solo.
Someone puts her nose
____________to the flowers
and in her excitement
______forgets to breathe in.
What did he bring you?
____________someone asks.
____They smell lovely, she says
___________instead of roses.
There are flowers
_______it’s possible not
to be wrong about. Their smell.
___The way they sit
___________doing nothing
in plastic in your hands.
__________________________________________
Laura Eve Engel’s work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Denver Quarterly, LIT, Cincinnati Review, Cream City Review and elsewhere. [Spoiler Alert], a chapbook co-written with Adam Peterson, will be available from The Collagist/Dzanc Books in the fall. She is the 2011 Jay C. and Ruth Halls Poetry Fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. You can follow her on Twitter @hoostown.
I don’t get it… sounds like a lazy girl that just wants people to take care of her… :/ Poetry. My works are a lot more mysterious and dark. See my stuff at When you do this stuff, u got to add some excitement! A plot twist! some killings :)