The author shall remain anonymous (unless they chose to divulge themselves in the comments.)
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If you would like your piece thrown to the wolves send it to salinger@ameritech.net with "Workshop the hell out of this poem" as the subject line.
This week's blind review is not a reader submission although the author did graduate from Antioch College. I was recently re-acquainted with this poem while reading a book on educational theory by Maxine Green. She used it to end an essay about the importance of incompleteness. She is not the author, we'll reveal that info next Friday.
Sometimes it seems we try so hard to get everything into a piece that we leave no room for the reader's imagination. Another pedagogical text I read stated that one reason to use poetry in the classroom was that it forced the consumer to infer. Can you look at your own work and say this? As Ray Bradbury said, “Put two and two on the page – but don’t add it up for the reader.”
Keeping Things Whole
In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.
When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body's been.
We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.