Yesterday, I read a great poem
about clams, although evidently,
it turned out more to be
instructions for cooking them –
Linguini with clams,
not living with clams
like I thought – even though,
I want to know, how.
I mistake everything for what
I want it to be: recipes for poems,
poems for instruction manuals,
classrooms for cathedrals.
Once, even, I saw a man
but he turned out
to be just a clam.
Eventually, all the poems
end up sounding alike:
written in that same short
language of longing.
Steep burden,
how my heart puns about.
Sarah Edwards has been published in The Hampden-Sydney Review and Leveler Magazine, among others. By day, she edits papers about pathology and pulls weeds. By year, she is moving to Spain. You can visit her at scedwards.tumblr.com. .