I Instruct My Toad How to Write Poetry
Study and Revise
Instead of cupping your bulbous
Eyes behind your webbed
Forefeet after waltzing to Yma Sumac’s
Gopher mambo in beginner ballroom,
Scrounge pen and paper. Scrawl
Asemic script. The keyboard
Can’t free you from meaning
Accept Criticism
Protect amphibian
Skin. Be mindful
It is a permeable
Membrane and absorbs
Toxins. This can’t be
Avoided even during hibernation
So emerge. Refuse to tattoo
Repeat Until You Rinse Out Meaning
On a car ride past the airport, age 9
Impressed by what you now know
Was your last sight of a sky blackening murmuration
(Although certainly smaller than in your father’s childhood)
Ask him, “why don’t they crash?” Repeat the word
“MurmurationMurmurationMurmuration”
Until it becomes pure sound. Cry to never see more
Than a hungry four and twenty
Amy Beth Sisson is struggling to emerge, toad-like, from the mud in a small town near Philly. Her poetry has appeared in The Night Heron Barks, Ran Off With the Star Bassoon, and Cleaver Magazine. Her fiction has appeared in The Best Short Stories of Philadelphia and Sweet Tree Review.