a woman who doesn’t read many poems asks is poetry meant to be
inaccessible if she’s supposed to feel caught in a thicket
without a boned shiv to free herself and no one near enough
to offer their blade trapped in the tangle as language vines
her neck to choke her out or fold her weary from all the sensory
wrestling I tell her absent sight sound serves touch matters
that she might bend bramble away move to the quiet clearing
every poem has them
pockets of air where lightning twice strikes