An insidious little poem for today by Michael Snediker. We liked the confrontational flirtation here, the crispness of its Jamesian distinctions, and the uncanny feeling of being caught holding a missing puzzle piece. —Dan Chiasson

The Golden Bowl

I did differed from I do differed from I can’t.
I couldn’t then as now make anyone happy.
We all more or less were bleeding. Which differed
from blood on all our hands. Held behind our
backs, varying reasons blooming each their own
stern logic. Time passed, returned, flirted with
seconds as it watched the days. And you watched,
didn’t you, everything, from the first illicit wink.

Michael Snediker’s poems have appeared in journals such as Black Warrior Review, Crazyhorse, jubilat, MARGIE, and Pleiades. His book, Queer Optimism: Lyric Personhood & Other Felicitous Persuasions (Dec 2008) was published by the University of Minnesota Press. He was the 2006 James Merrill Writer-in-Residence, and teaches American Literature at Queen’s University, in Kingston, Ontario.