Megan Gileza

Charles Wright said that he tries to write poems in a nonspecific way

not in that they lack specifics

but in that they speak to the universal

 

but I find poems in the details

like the way when I can hear my sister

playing the piano from my bedroom

I open the door and listen

 

to the notes that fall like snowflakes

from her fingertips into existence

into my chest and then disappear

and I imagine the way I know her hands

are dancing across the keys

asking the universe to hear them

but not caring if it doesn’t

 

there’s some of her soul in those notes

just like there’s some of me in mine

except mine are scattered across napkins

and scribbled in the corners of sketchbooks

details, picked up and put down

like little prayers

 

Wright said poetry is like a rosary

for how we all only really know one or two things

and write the same poem over and over again and

all of our poems are the same poem

beads that we keep turning over and over in our palms

 

trying to make them tell us something

trying to make them mean something

 

If poetry is a prayer,

what are we praying to?

Not God, I think.

And if poetry is a prayer,

what is it we’re praying for?

 

I want my words to fall like snowflakes

and melt on somebody’s skin

and make them feel something

like when a minor chord hits your ears

but you feel it in your chest

vibrating

and you wish there were words

for the exact way that feels

but there aren’t .

 

I think if I were to pray for something

I’d pray for the words

for those moments

and I’d pray that small things

can sometimes be more than what they are.

 

(Amen)