Evergreen Review

Couched
by Michael Bazzett

I’m slouched
on the couch,
notebook propped

against belt buckle,
green tea cooling
in a celadon cup

because I’m more interested
in finding words
to speak to you

than drinking tea.
It’s a conundrum.
If I find adequate ones,

I’ll be positioned here
forever.
Which could be

strange for whoever
eventually moves into this house
or ends up with this couch

purchased for a song
because of the pensive
cadaver posed on its cushions.

If I don’t find adequate
words this never happened
and I am released to oblivion.

I don’t state this with the intent
of shining my poetic
shoes, like Ovid.

I’m simply dwelling
on how words might pin
some version of me

to this couch using threads
that stitch this here
into some small forever.

BIO:
?Michael Bazzett’s poems have appeared in West Branch, Beloit Poetry Journal, Best New Poets, Green Mountains Review, DIAGRAM, and The Los Angeles Review, among others.  He was the winner of the 2008 Bechtel Prize from Teachers & Writers Collaborative and was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize. New poems are forthcoming in Carolina Quarterly, Pleiades, Bateau, The COLLAGIST and The Literary Review.  He lives in Minneapolis with his wife and two children.