"You Say You Have No Title?" by Barbara Daniels

Here, take some of mine:
“Poem Ending with a Tulip”
“Weed of the Week”
“Potato Soup” I know you’re

committed to “Untitled,” thinking
it gives you the ultimate freedom.
But I want more from you:
a pointing finger, wink, or smile.

I have to climb right into
your poem as if it’s a shower
with no shower door,
no plastic curtain to slap my body.

So how about these:
“Elvis Spotted at Walmart”
“Is Your Sex Drive Normal?”
“Secret Phases of the Moon”

You don’t give your poems
mirrored frames, no fancy trefoil
or tracery. I have to look in
through just a bare window

to get a view of your socks, holes
revealing your wiggling toes.
You have a theory about spontaneity
and gaining a feeling of closeness.

But you don’t have titles. Try these:
“The History of Love in 7 Lines”
“I Found This at the Goodwill”
“Five Dogs and a Furious Girl”

***

Barbara Daniels’s Talk to the Lioness was published by Casa de Cinco Hermanas Press in 2020. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Lake Effect, Cleaver, Faultline, Small Orange, Meridian, and elsewhere. Barbara Daniels received a 2020 fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.

Artwork: Summer Treasure 129 by Jim Ross. Photograph.
Jim Ross jumped into creative pursuits in 2015 after leaving a rewarding career in public health research. With a graduate degree from Howard University, since retiring he's published nonfiction, poetry, and photography in nearly 150 journals and anthologies on four continents. Jim and his wife—parents of two health professionals on the front lines and grandparents of five preschoolers—split their time between city and mountains.