Skip to main content
By Katy Lederer

That everything's inevitable.
That fate is whatever has already happened.
The brain, which is an elemental, as sane, as the rest of the processing universe is.
In this world, I am the surest thing.
Scrunched-up arms, folded legs, lovely destitute eyes.
Please insert your spare coins.
I am filling them up.
Please insert your spare vision, your vigor, your vim.
But yet, I am a vatic one.
As vatic as the Vatican.
In the temper and the tantrum, in the well-kept arboretum
I am waiting, like an animal,
For poetry.


Katy Lederer, "That Everything’s Inevitable" from The Heaven-Sent Leaf. Copyright © 2008 by Katy Lederer.  Reprinted by permission of BOA Editions, Ltd. .

Source: The Heaven-Sent Leaf (BOA Editions Ltd., 2008)

  • Arts & Sciences
  • Living

Poet Bio

Katy Lederer
Katy Lederer earned her BA from the University of California-Berkeley and MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. In 1997 Lederer founded the poetry Explosive Magazine and the press Spectacular Books; she edited both ventures until 2007.She is a former editor of The Poetry Project Newsletter and a current poetry editor at Fence Magazine. She serves on the boards of the St. Mark’s Poetry Project and Triple Canopy. See More By This Poet

More Poems about Arts & Sciences

Browse poems about Arts & Sciences

More Poems about Living

Browse poems about Living Get a random poem