Poet’s Biggest Fear

By Ron. Lavalette

Hanging out with the fictionauts and the prosers, he fears, may have damaged his poetry.

These days, instead of concentrating on linebreaks and imagery, he worries about commas and semicolons; thinks in dependent clauses; ponders parallel constructions and parenthetical prepositional phrases.

When he writes, he no longer recites each phrase aloud to hear it sing.

Instead, he declaims his work from start to finish, paragraph by dreary paragraph, from beginning to end to ensure that it makes sense; conforms to the norms of grammar’s logic.

Sometimes it puts him to sleep.

He’s afraid of writing a nightmare.