There are triggers for poems and then there are the poems themselves. In my experience, if a trigger has any chance of being involved with the writing of a poem, the two must occur nearly simultaneously.
if a whale were to blink at you
the holy disorder of toddlers
the evolutionary ancientness of alligators and why this makes them scary
You can’t put a trigger in a jar and save it for later. Only very occasionally can you manage to let it sit for an amount of time, hovering in the ether. And then you can’t look at it or think about it too hard. If you do it will die. If it has any chance, it must stay safely in the corner of your eye, like a spirit.
the timelessness of love vs. the immediacy of wanting
what Google thinks you’re looking for
the horror of finding something foreign growing on your body
For the most part, all triggers are fallen leaves dead on the scene. The very idea of having an idea for a poem is ludicrous. Poems do not emerge from plans but from presence.
bus rides in Ecuador and the patience of the Ecuadorian people
pipelines
the helplessness of animals without arms
Hopelessly I am compelled to write these triggers down, as though I’ll be getting to them soon. They sit in my notebooks like jars on shelves. These stillborns. These formaldehyde curiosities.
stage directions
instructions for a spell or ritual
emergency
Maybe some day or in some other hands their death will wear off and they’ll turn into prompts. I hope they disguise themselves and come to me again, like ghosts that only show up in photographs.
the word “catholic,” lowercased
the exquisitely threadbare quality of love
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