Forget Magazine. Remember, Remember, Remember.

The Workshop Leader's Advice
(Given Outdoors) &
What She Did With It
by Jeanette Lynes

'Poetry is about big change,' he says.
She swishes at a mosquito (minute ghost
near her face). They're benched at the head
of a great valley. He hints her poems are go-carts
in the eighteen-wheeler rally of real poetry (the needle
goes in, insect wins, imbibes blood). 'Why write?'
A tiny pink balloon grows on her cheek. Later on her
monastic slab of bed her mind thrums through her small
solipsistic life. Bugs clatter the screen to get at her
(in the insect kingdom she's a star). What has she changed?
She's vowed to be better, kinder, more sober.
She's been whacked about the sky for hours,
knees squashed into her ribcage, just to be loved.
She once gave to the Liver Society. Does this matter?
The day on the bench is past, the swelling gone down.
To those seated with her now (well away
from biting zones) she says 'nothing
is too small. Write, write'.

Jeanette Lynes is a locomotive to us, man. A freight train.