By: Julie Benesh
Spare me the organ recital
such music only decomposes
I just want to know how
not to be ashamed of my panicula
my varicosities and lipid count
how not to trigger a spiral into aboulia
Spare me your liturgy of forgetfulness
subtle arguments you draw
that end in draws
your litany of filtered memories
like a junk drawer of dreams
you mistake for ours
Spare me your
semiotics of piety
to be a martyr is grave
as victim is gravity
as default
tell me how you talk yourself up
in the morning
down at night to sleep
under the same dark blanket
as the rest of us
the none of us who ever
were or ever will
be spared
Julie Benesh is recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Grant and graduate of Warren Wilson College’s Program for Writers. Her work has appeared in Bestial Noise: A Tin House Fiction Reader, Tin House Magazine (print), Crab Orchard Review, Florida Review, Gulf Stream, Hobart, Cleaver, and other places. Read more at juliebenesh.com.
"This poem was immensely satisfying to write; it did not take long, and the revisions were minimal, mainly involving line breaks and stanza shapes. I believe SPARE is the first poem I have ever finished completely devoid of punctuation. It occurred to me only after finishing it that the word 'spare' is a contronym, meaning both excess and no excess; plenty and restraint! I can imagine cracking this poem open to yield future "spare" poems, whether more expansive or less so."
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