A Portrait of the Poet as a Middle-Aged Man: A Tanka Sequence

I am forty…something
in the attic waiting
alone
four years gone by
and yet no chapbooks

my life… a void
no great book
bears my name
I hit my head
with books by other poets

hit hard by
The Complete Poems
of Chen-ou Liu
I wake to rain
chattering in the room

June 2010 issue of LYNX