It’s all about confidence,
they said. You have to have
as much chutzpah as all those dudes who
self-publish poem after poem about
road kill and baseball, girls, their
fathers, chess, sailing, yeats’ gyre and
bukowski’s pocked face. I was bold to write

aloud before three teachers
said they liked my poems. I got excited
when someone told me all islands
are sand eventually, so I visited the coast;
I learned what “craggy” means to me.

I’ve started living in the past:
I returned a man; I chose to
come home, to stay always
home. They asked me to publish and publish
and publish my mistakes.