Good Poetry
by Amanda Rounds

I don’t understand good poetry,
the way words rebel
against ironclad Grammar,

turn their backs, leap over apostrophe,
period.
Catastrophe following Word Revolution.

Word, words, wordings
backflip,     turn,
        dance,             skip –

                collide
on the down beat of a back alley stairwell,
crumbling as they stumble, somersault:
noun over
        noun over
                verb over
                        noun over gerund,
making only the teeniest of tiniest sounds.

I’ve never understood
the purple storm of metaphor:
lion devours syllables with the girl next door,
while Grammar recovers, rises to fight, but
        falls in the Delaware and
                                       sinks into the night.

But what I really don’t understand is
how poets do it: seducing the words
                  like there’s nothing to it,
feeding the girl
and taming the beast
concocting for tasters a wild word feast.

Amanda Rounds just finished her third year at Fairhaven College. She enjoys reading, using public transportation, and cooking. She is studying editing, publishing and writing, and is interested in the writing process and its role in promoting social equality.