Seamless poems drive the envious women crazy,
so they begin noting the way a poet has failed,
like a building they think says nothing about a space
it has sculpted, taking over what was once there,
sitting in it without apology to these envious women
who sit on a kind gesture and begin to assume the way
people who assume sit squarely on kind gestures,
spaces waiting to be made useful, as if they know
the sages’ uncarved block, whole and unassuming,
envious women say everything they envy must go
to make way for them as they are seething inside,
and cannot stand what envy does to them when they see
the almost perfect way love sits in what we call nature,
while their brazen hearts tell them they are beautiful.

Original appearance in the latest installment of Boston Poetry Union’s bold new online magazine Poetry Northeast, and again in the print annual at year’s end.