Finding the formula again

 
Albert Goldbarth
Various Ulia

      Did we say it loud? Eventually
we said it. Cancer. Somewhere someone else
said AIDS. But only toward the last,
near the end, when the dying was
the fear‒and not the dying's being invited.
For such is the power of utterance.

      Susie says that even ten years since the divorce,
she refuses to drive alone at night
‒that's when the words come back.

      Although the infamous Mercury Theater production
of The War of the Worlds (October 30, 1938)
was intended to horrify, still,
"CBS cut the cries of the invading Martians
('Ulia, Ulia, Ulia') as too frightening."

      A song comes on; she won't say why, but
she needs to turn off the radio.

* * * * *

I have, again, come into an understanding of how my 'formula' for making work functions - after a talk with Allie about my poetry reading this past weekend. Simply, it isn't just a matter of soundly conceptually constructing a piece (that is important), but there also needs to be room, running room. As Tony Tasset would say, "Make it weird."