This piece is about 1 printed pages long.
It is copyright © Katy Lederer and Jacket magazine 2007.
I am walking through the money trees, and here a little bough,
Or bow.
I handle it and straddle it, and take a little bow —
Just
To love yourself, honey, put your claw on the table.
Just
To love oneself, honey, kinda lopsided, loamy.
I am standing on the corner, here, the corner of my life.
My thumb is out. The sun is out.
The verbiage like foliage is increasing as the weather wanes.
The sum of the parts equals less than the whole.
Or the howl. Or the how.
Or the hole.
Katy Lederer is poetry editor of Fence magazine. This poem is from a collection entitled The Heaven-Sent Leaf, forthcoming from BOA Editions in 2008. Other poems from the collection have appeared or are forthcoming in The Boston Review, The Gertrude Stein Awards in Innovative American Poetry (Green Integer, 2008), and Efforts and Affections: Women Writers Talk About Their Mentors (U Iowa Press, 2008) Her memoir, Poker Face: A Girlhood Among Gamblers, came out on Crown in 2003.
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