Authorial Intent Ale By Drema Drudge

Poetry isn’t a

writing residency at some

chichi

place where

you stand around and talk among

flaccid hors d'oeuvres

and drink Authorial Intent Ale

while thinking briefly over the

workshop sheets you’ll be discussing

tomorrow

when

everyone knows

you just want to get to and through

your own.

Crown me now,

and also,

tell me why my work

sucks.

But mostly, crown me.

Poetry needs

3 a.m. and

a phrase overheard on the subway

and

a love so deep and wide

you can only carry it

with a hand truck

and a pack of Gitanes.

And yet

you have.

(And maybe it needs a red pen.)

Drema Drudge is a novelist and poet whose poetry blends emotional candor and the everyday with longing. She has an MFA from the Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing, and her work has appeared in The Word’s Faire, The Louisville Review, Spectrum, and others.