I Got Into Poetry for the Money

Poem

Ema Dumitru
Scuzzbucket

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from personal archive

At twelve, I tell mom I mean business.

At fifteen, I dig up a greedy tongue, dust off its many-legged secrets. By now, I know the dirt and the sun. I can tell seeds from writhing things in the pantry of a world I almost remember from dreams. I pass them my body, let them sink their roots into me.

At nineteen, my time is up. What shall I become? And most importantly, how does it begin? How does someone start selling their words to be used by others however they like?

At twenty-two, I am unfinished business, and the business does not finish with me.

At twenty-five, it’s July, and I have no hope in becoming. I hack and hack at a guilty landscape; I raise up the dirt and magic.

At twenty-nine, I am afraid writing will love me into stone.

At thirty-one, I tell people I got into poetry for the money, and also for the leaves and blossoms, but most of all
for the shaking.

Even now, this landscape is assembling.
Money grows on trees—
just not the ones I’m planting.

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