Brian Fanelli’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Harpur Palate, Evening Street Review, The Portland Review, Boston Literary Magazine, Blue Lotus Review, Inkwell Journal, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Chiron Review, and other publications. He is the author of the chapbook Front Man and his first full-length collection is forthcoming in 2013 from unbound CONTENT. Brian also writes poetry reviews for PANK and has an MFA in creative writing from Wilkes University. He teaches at Keystone College. For more information visit his website.

Where Poetry Exists
By Brian Fanelli

I tell my students poetry is found
in empty mineshafts that run under
their old town, that it exists
in the history within jagged rock walls,
dirt that streaked miners’s faces,
dust that caked their boots.
I tell them poetry is found
in the lines of their great grandfather’s hands,
scarred from years toiling in the town’s black underbelly.
I tell them poetry is found
in conversations construction workers have
at diners, that it exists in the details
of what they say, how they say it.
I tell them poetry is found
in the kiss between a husband and wife, home
from a 10-hour shift, and their long sigh
after they collapse on the couch.
I tell them poetry is found in labor
of men and women who still populate
their hometown, that to write it seriously
should be as habitual as waking
to the alarm clock’s buzz and meeting the work day.