One Is One
by Marie Ponsot

Read the automated transcript.

Heart, you bully, you punk, I’m wrecked, I’m shocked
stiff. You? you still try to rule the world—though
I’ve got you: identified, starving, locked
in a cage you will not leave alive, no
matter how you hate it, pound its walls,
& thrill its corridors with messages.

Brute. Spy. I trusted you. Now you reel & brawl
in your cell but I’m deaf to your rages,
your greed to go solo, your eloquent
threats of worse things you (knowing me) could do.
You scare me, bragging you’re a double agent

since jailers are prisoners’ prisoners too.
Think! Reform! Make us one. Join the rest of us,
and joy may come, and make its test of us.

"One Is One" by Marie Ponsot, from EASY by Marie Ponsot, copyright © 2011 Knopf. Used by permission of the estate of Marie Ponsot.