Like a Man Gone Mad: Poems in a New Century

No Words for This

89 No Words for This If a true poem is one you wish you never had to write, then this is it. Don’t read it just to say you’ve read it. That’s like the traveler who went to Spain so he could say he went to Spain. The words I’ve picked have really picked themselves, but what’s not written here is where the poem breathes . . . The mother of a captain killed by snipers read his final letter postmarked on the date he died. She read it often after that. And every time she closed the envelope, she’d slowly lick it shut so that her tongue could taste him in the last thing he ever touched. ...