Kathryn Jacobs is a poet and full professor at Texas A & M, currently teaching from Flint (online). David Roberts Books published an anthology of her poems, In Transit, last September. She also has three chapbooks (from Finishing Line and Pudding House Press), and roughly a hundred and thirty poems published at Xavier, Whiskey Island, The New Formalist, Measure, 14 by 14, Light Quarterly, Deronda Review, Wordgathering, Ibbetson Magazine, Acumen (UK), Slant, etc She also has a book of literary criticism (Marriage Contracts from Chaucer to the Renaissance Stage, 2001) from the University Press of Florida.
Spring 2012
Table of Contents - Vol. VIII, No. 1
Poetry Fiction Translations Essays Reviews
Kathryn Jacobs
A Difficult Day At the Typewriter
I stuck them out there (Little Wriggly Words)
without a life preserver, context-less –
yep, stranded in electric no-man's land.
Think of it as a sudden fit of pique
because the sounds were uncooperative.
The syllables protruded everywhere,
like poking at balloons. But I fixed them:
I stuck them in the white space that unscrolls
below my bottom margin: go away
until I say so (shove down “enter,” HOLD).
It was most satisfying: off they zipped,
god-knows how many cyber-pages down.
Retrievable, when they behaved themselves.
And in the meantime, they can thank their “i”s
that they weren't backspaced to oblivion
(because some evenings, when the blues set in,
I hit that backspace button pretty hard)
As for the empty page – well, not for long.
It seems that Outer Marginalia
is more productive than a yeast in wort.
Or something happened out there. All I know
is, they conscripted all my docile rows
of Times New Roman. And I've no idea
what happened to the poem I tried to write,
So good thing I like this one. Wriggly words –
© Kathryn Jacobs
