National Poetry Month : Dale Tracy,

Vaunt

Inked yet unked, I utter to the last extremity.

I gather up my unprocreant twiggage, my unrimpled me.

I am grateful to my alleged disarray.

I am grateful to my candid friend’s pearls.

I am grateful to commit clutched rhymes.

I am grateful to my qualified disappointment.

I am grateful to the news at my fingerprints.

I am grateful to judge lest my judgment be judged.

I jest when I just want to be grateful.

I am gracious, sateless, unbecoming.

Dale Tracy is the author of the chapbooks Celebration Machine (Proper Tales Press, 2018) and The Mystery of Ornament (above/ground press, 2020), the four-poem chapoem What It Satisfies (Puddles of Sky Press, 2016), and the monograph With the Witnesses: Poetry, Compassion, and Claimed Experience (McGill-Queen’s, 2017). She is an adjunct assistant professor in the Department of English, Culture, and Communication and is currently the associate chair of the Writing Centre at the Royal Military College of Canada.