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      December 5, 2023The End of Hurt Is Not HealingJ.B. Penname

      after Jamaica Baldwin

      Whose bright idea was it to start tearing
      out pages of poetry and wadding them up
      to plug our wounds? The poems I like don’t
      even come when you call them. As though
      they’ve forgotten their masters, lost the sound
      of their own names. They bear no antiseptics,
      cannot cauterize you clean, but the way they
      lick themselves is still good for a laugh. Is that
      what I aspire to? Five years ago I nicked my finger
      slicing a carrot. Five years and I can’t even watch my
      father carve a turkey without getting second-hand
      please-don’t-lose-your-goddamn-fingers syndrome.
      But sure, when he’s done I can sit at the counter. In the
      quiet of the kitchen, I can eat the turkey. Man what a turkey.

      from Prompt Poem of the Month

      Note from the series editor, Katie Dozier

      Prompt: Write a sonnet with the title “The End of _____ Is Not _____” after Jamaica Baldwin’s American sonnet, “The End of Sorrow Is Not Happiness.”

      “As someone that has been plugging my wounds with poetry since childhood, I found the humor in J. B. Pename’s poem as refreshing as it is powerful. These fourteen lines have caused me to redefine what it is to heal. Man what a poem!”

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