by Caleb Horowitz
For a long while, I forgot
how to write poems, until
a sixteen-year-old gave me
an intricate doodle of a frog
on the back of a hotel napkin
and I remembered then
some rule or other about
enjambment, which I do
terribly—a poet
friend once called my line breaks
“shabby.” I am always trying
to construct jokes or little surprises
with them instead of finding
anything sincere. But I don’t know,
the drawing on the napkin was a
kind of joke, but a sincere one, a goofy frog
eating cookies, and a melodramatic
“I’m sorry”
written bubble-lettered in
the napkin’s white sky—
she had taken a subway to the hotel
from the debate competition
without telling us, and I had reprimanded her, hence,
the napkin, the very silly frog,
remarkably doodled—she could be
a painter, I think, this student.
Once, another sixteen-year-old left
a flower on my desk, between half
a dozen old coffee mugs,
and that day I thought of nothing
but symbols, of the thing
at the center, when you peel back
the rind of the poem.
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Caleb Horowitz is a Jewish North Carolinian poet, high school speech and debate teacher, and penguin enthusiast. You can find his work in Gashmius, Verklempt!, and Paper Brigade. He is also an inaugural conference member of Yetzirah: a hearth for Jewish poetry.
Image: Masha Rostovskaya
ID: white cloth napkin.
Psaltery & Lyre 