Sara Fryd’s most recent poem to appear here was Memories of Pearls (July 2012).

Five Days Without a Poem
By Sara Fryd

I write notes in a 5×7 spiral Mead
with a chamois colored cover
like Glenn Close used in Jagged Edge
to convince herself that Jeff Bridges
was innocent of the murder of
his wife and housekeeper.
Have written notes in emergency lanes
alongside freeways
in Arizona, California, and New Mexico;
when words were leaking out my fingers
faster than I could contain them.
So I sit here in my red and gold Subaru
by the side of the road in a Circle K parking lot
listening to Black Magic Woman on 95.5 FM
writing with a borrowed pen
I begged for at the counter.
What kind of writer am I after all,
traveling with a spiral 5×7 and no pen?
Writing in the sky and parking lots
because I was visiting someone
with a Master’s degree in English
from an Ivy League school
who doesn’t like Emily Dickinson,
or poets for that matter,
so I haven’t written since last week.
And now, words are streaming through my fingers,
spilling out my ears,
leaking onto white blue-lined paper
held together by metal concentric circles
in a chamois colored 5×7 Mead.