A Poetry Manuscript...

Finds its own way, makes its own path through the poetry forest.

Knows itself. Knows the self is a glimmer.

Creates its own meter: how it measures the world.

Has rhythms particular to itself.

Understands entwinement, entanglement. Like an abandoned theater, its seats covered in vines.

Its images are anchored. Are hot air balloons. Are a river. A church choir. A street performer.

Its sum is greater than its parts. Its parts rival its sum.

Takes as much time as it needs—doesn’t throttle its energy or spin itself out.

Is an expert in its ways of not-knowing.

Risks something. Risks many things.

Challenges, advocates, blesses, meditates.

Knows when to be clear and when to blur.

Draws a line. Draws it slant.

Is an exercise in knowing and not-knowing, rest and exercise, health and illness, binaries and nonbinaries.

Has both friends and opponents.

Has argument. Otherwise known as narrative. Otherwise known as belief. As history. As testimony. As description.

Has touchstones of art in its working memory.

Has a leaky memory.

Makes its own archive from its failures.

Embraces its own failures.

Embraces acknowledgment.

Remembers that it is only a guest in the house of language.

Doesn’t privilege one form of knowing over another.

Loves the material best of all: the sound, the image.

Sings its way in the dark.