From Holly Iglesias: This poem manifests the process of how I came to write prose poems, the experience of composition, and the solidity of the product, the thing, the poem itself—
 

ARS POETICA, THE THING ITSELF

 by Holly Iglesias

The first one flew out like a fetus past due, bruised and blotchy, twitchy limbs, howling mouth. New to creation, barely composed myself, I could not have born broken lines.

Then my son began to cruise the streets, calling on the hour as he scoped out the perfect place, the right moment. An extended goodbye, his last ride, the ache manifest only in his voice.

I saw the wall that would deliver him, the concrete absorbing his pain, the shape of his end an embankment, solid as the Luger my father hid in his desk, insurance against the death of love.