Swizzle Stick

Self-Made Man

I am figuring a man out of clay
& I can’t get his head to sit

believably on his shoulders
I prod & pinch at his features

with their glower of resentment
& smooth my wet fingers

down his terracotta back.
With a popsicle stick

I draw the indentation
of his spine, then fashion

shoulder blades with my thumbs.
His anatomy is imperfect

& so is mine. The man emerging
from this laboured mud

has no model. It’s a kind of muscle
memory, but faulty, malformed

& monstrously silent. He's a bad
man. I know I will pound this man

unfigured back into clay, a mere
lump. This is no self-made man.


April 7: Figure something out in a poem