By Max Ritvo
After the cocoon I was in a human body
instead of a butterfly’s. All along my back
there was great pain — I groped to my feet
where I felt wings behind me, trying
to tilt me back. They succeeded in doing so
after a day of exertion. I called that time,
overwhelmed with the ghosts of my wings, sleep.
My thoughts remained those of a caterpillar —
I took pleasure in climbing trees. I snuck food
into all my pains. My mouth produced language
which I attempted to spin over myself
and rip through happier and healthier.
I’d do this every few minutes. I’d think to myself
What made me such a failure?
It’s all a little touchingly pathetic. To live like this,
a grown creature telling ghost stories,
staring at pictures, paralyzed for hours.
And even over dinner or in bed —
still hearing the stories, seeing the pictures —
an undertow sucking me back into myself.
I’m told to set myself goals. But my mind
doesn’t work that way. I, instead, have wishes
for myself. Wishes aren’t afraid
to take on their own color and life —
like a boy who takes a razor from a high cabinet
puffs out his cheeks and strips them bloody.
This poem is from Four Reincarnations by Max Ritvo (Milkweed Editions, 2016). Copyright © 2016 by Max Ritvo. Reprinted with permission from Milkweed Editions.
Poet Bio
More Poems about Arts & Sciences
Sestina in Prose
It was like climbing a mountain to those of us who’d climbed one. To the others, it was like, I suppose, something else. In other words, we let everybody find her own figure of speech.
Not that it—speech—lay thick on the...
The Heart Shows No Signs
The heart, the surgeon says, does not reveal
the small rifts, the hairline cracks which
split the hairline cracks they conceal cops
and robbers in a stretch of skin flaunting
star-scars with show of blood bone
the ledges of what it holds tight in checkmate
moves:...
More Poems about Living
Dragons
We gathered in a field southwest of town,
several hundred hauling coolers
and folding chairs along a gravel road
dry in August, two ruts of soft dust
that soaked into our clothes
and rose in plumes behind us.
By noon we could discern their massive coils
emerging...
How to Triumph Like a Girl
I like the lady horses best,
how they make it all look easy,
like running 40 miles per hour
is as fun as taking a nap, or grass.
I like their lady horse swagger,
after winning. Ears up, girls, ears up!
But mainly, let’s be honest,...
More Poems about Nature
How to Triumph Like a Girl
I like the lady horses best,
how they make it all look easy,
like running 40 miles per hour
is as fun as taking a nap, or grass.
I like their lady horse swagger,
after winning. Ears up, girls, ears up!
But mainly, let’s be honest,...
Sestina in Prose
It was like climbing a mountain to those of us who’d climbed one. To the others, it was like, I suppose, something else. In other words, we let everybody find her own figure of speech.
Not that it—speech—lay thick on the...