Poetry Index The Page is Blank sitting on the floor with a plastic blue lap desk balanced on my thighs I pick at the scabs that have crusted over the wounds in my writing It hasn't healed properly. I haven't healed properly. using a jagged fingernail as a chisel I scrape away the layers of verbose articulation. In the crevasse of a pitted and hardened gash I find a word thick with webby strands of my tissue my mouth falls open as I concentrate eyes focused on the word twisting it a sharp tug and it's free. I place it tenderly sloppy with my own blood on the sterile white page thighs pulses on its own, waiting my chin creeps low again returning to the mortified skin jabbing with the graphite of my pencil separating veins from letters and gurney it breathlessly to the page. I cradle chisel with thighs and their plasma spreads feeding one another a large swelling pulls them closer the lines of my jaw tensed with silenced pain I forget the pencil standing up-end in my thigh and watch as fingernail is born the cells multiplying followed by wounds and writing and webby a tiny salve of accomplishment it looks a little bit like poetry Feedback Note: This poem took on many odd changes from professor and class critique while in my poetry class in the fall of 2001. To see these changes, the original is still available.