A Poem for a Thursday #124

Grace Paley was an American short story writer, poet, and political activist. A volume of her collected short stories was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. She said of her writing “I could not help the fact that I had not gone to war, and I had not done the male things. I had lived a woman’s life and that is what I wrote about.” While she was most well-known for her short stories she also published several volumes of poetry.

I was going to write a poem
I made a pie instead it took
about the same amount of time
of course the pie was a final
draft a poem would have had some
distance to go days and weeks and
much crumpled paper

the pie already had a talking
tumbling audience among small
trucks and a fire engine on 
the kitchen floor

everybody will like this pie
it wil have apples and cranberries
dried apricots in it many friends
will say why in the world did you
make only one

this does not happen with poems

because of unreportable
sadnesses I decided to 
settle this morning for a re-
sponsive eatership I do not
want to wait a week a year a
generation for the right 
consumer to come along

The Poet's Occasional Alternative
Grace Paley