Claire Leeds lives and works on a farm in southern Wisconsin, holds a BA in Creative Writing and is currently working toward a BS in Nursing.

Because The Poem is a Limited Resource

I’ll ration stanzas like canned
meat during wartime; exhaust

verse to vapor, fume enough to keep
this engine plotting A to B, B to C,
C to D, origin to peak; nothing

metaphoric about our destination
but what propels us toward it
is the chemistry of conversion:

a stake drilled into the lawn distills
into the anchor of a compass;

leashed dog orbits like graphite,
carves with her body the edge
of a perfect circle,

a flattened globe, the rounded lip
of a glass from above;
the memory of scotch on my breath;

when this fuel runs out, I won’t drive
home, but bury my keys in the earth
and wait to see what grows there.