Chord

That art should once have been marked
with this delicacy: always only one
of each thing made, so that your poem
has its one life on the sheet
you have chosen for it, or the snapshot
of the birthday party, everything
in the room upended by the children's
jubilation, survives only
in the single defended piece of glass.

Rick Barot was born in the Philippines, and received his MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He is the author of The Darker Fall and Want and teaches at the MFA Program for Writers at ...