I write the night awake,

[Doreen Peri]

(2006)

I write the night awake, take halos off a candle flame, claim a midnight naming it a pet name tamed to be my own like a squirrel or a cat, stolen like a missed letter. And that, the better part of the juxtaposition of my pen to a white sheet treats the worst part of memory with a stroke.

Many may joke about a woman's position.

I spread the legs of discovery, my head wed with pillow-talk dread, my arms in reach for blankets of synonym, lucid feather-filled phrases and I write epics, damnations, jests and proclamations, juried art fests, rests and accents of staccato notes, amplified pedals to sustain while Lucifer plots my demise, my name like a myth the size of a Jesus tree bled dry in an aborted suck.

But what is it worth, the writing? What is it worth? I attempt to plagiarize myself with a search – steal lines out of the birth of my own saliva, writhe on the floor when I read myself aloud to me, passionately imagining I have arrived at wisdom in a grand size and yet I forget what I wrote a minute or two ago since I elect to reject verbiage without a thesaurus check.

I am a tediously negligent night writer.

Mornings, I sleep to keep stanza and stride secret.