Tracing Wrist Scars

I used to keep exquisite potted plants.
Now, just pots of dirt.
My friend Meghann keeps pots of dirt.
One with a ceramic hand creeping out,
another, a foot. Funny, the things we covet.
I only learned to begin wanting again recently.
I don’t know where to place my wants.
How to justify them, or actually obtain.
It isn’t fair to want things
after trying to give everything away.
The wine isn’t fair, the overpriced penne.
Paycheck, new bootlaces, a night out for music
or poetry or beer. This guilt.
Wanting a day of sun. Or even rain.
Things that racket and wail, things that shimmy
or sit quietly on a windowsill.
Shameful, I think, to covet a tattoo
or philosophical conversation.
A book, a trinket. A new poem. A pulse.

Jeanann Verlee is author of Racing Hummingbirds, recipient of the Independent Publisher Book Award Silver Medal in poetry, and the forthcoming collection, Said the Manic to the Muse. She has been awarded the Third Coast Poetry Prize and the Sandy Crimmins National Prize for Poetry. Her work has appeared in The New York Quarterly, Rattle, and failbetter, among others. Verlee wears polka dots and kisses Rottweilers. She believes in you.