Leslie McGrath

I’m interested in restraint in all its forms. I’m also a lover of play. These three short poems are an attempt to meld play (in this case wordplay) with the formal restraint of very short poems. I wrote “Sleek” first. I keep a file of words and phrases that move me, into which I dip from time to time. I’d read Norman Rush’s Mortals five years ago, and I enjoyed his use of language as much as the plot. He used the phrase “sleek as a pennywhistle” a couple of times, and I loved its onomatopoeic music and arcane tinge—both playful and lonely. The poem I wrote as a result speaks to those impulses.

Once I realized how the sound of sleek was so evocative, I thought of similar words. Slack came next. My beloved old dog had just had her leg removed. She was re-learning how to walk. Watching her struggle left me sad and guilty, until I realized that her other doggy motions, tail-wagging and licking, were undisturbed, despite her missing leg and the pouch of skin left at her ribs.

Slick came last. The breadth of the global economic crisis stuns me; it’s even entered a number of my poems. Red ink, once a metaphor for debt, is now a metaphor for danger. What quality of rain’s more dangerous than its slickness?