Fog—

The needle this morning wavers indifferently

Beauty—not-beauty—

The median and mode of your days—

Impassive sky against your forehead blocking any chance of feeling eager,

But also dulling greed

Something approaches in the lull—

Not exactly beauty but the chance of an answer to your yes-or-no question,

The eightball’s icosahedron . . .

Am I even suited to this—

Writing to save your life—pushing on past every clumsy letter—

Hoping for a flower?

“The Magic 8 Ball contains a 20-sided die with 10 positive answers, 5 negative answers, and 5 vague responses”

Shake it, shake it!

That’s your sense of form

Copyright © 2023 by Chris Nealon. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on June 19, 2023, by the Academy of American Poets. 

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“This is a pandemic poem, in a way, about journal writing and silent mornings and how they come together sometimes to let you ask yourself, ‘Hey, where do poems come from, after all?’ It’s also a poem about how sometimes the answer to that question is at least as comical as it is profound.”
—Chris Nealon