J. Zimmerman

Upstarts

After poetry, each nerve lightning-struck, my brain was filled, had completely stopped forming new paths. Bly said, "You only need listen to every third poem so you don't get overwhelmed." But I listened diligently to everything. On returning home I could only stand gawping at the red and golden parrot tulips in my garden. I'd forgotten I'd planted them till these buds erupted, calm volcanoes of lust and riches. Nowadays when I come across my poems in journals and anthologies I am astonished, not that they are there but that they are mine.

through the cabin wall
a banana slug
slips in