Ed Zahniser’s most recent poem to appear here was “Pattern Recognition” (March 2019).

A Daughter of Memory
By Ed Zahniser

The one day last year that I took off
from being a poet I didn’t carry a pen
when we went to a party where a woman
who came with my photographer friend
Mark talked to me about first one thing
and then another that were all like first lines
of new poems and me with no pen. I think
she said “I’m a daughter of Memory,” but
then a young woman named Lethe,
I think, so sinuous she more flowed than
walked, Lethe streamed by, and away
flew each first line of each new poem
and this was all I could remember.