Given the unique layout of this poem, we suggest reading it on a computer screen or in the landscape orientation on your phone. Even so, depending on the size of your phone, line breaks may occur that adversely affect the look and experience of the poem.

In order to view the poem as the author intended it to appear, we strongly encourage you to click on this link (which will take you to a PDF): If I’m not careful, it all becomes word

If I’m not careful, it all becomes word
Pam Vap

Poem,
you do
not own me.

Hey, you,
listen up. You
do not own me.

You are
not the sound
of my son’s skateboard,
the roll and roll and roll and
pause, and roll again; not the dumb
love song on the radio nor the heavy
memory of my father drunk; not the pink sign
advertising prom manicures nor the news headline:
Thirteen Miners Found Dead; not the chef’s thin fingers
nor talcum dust puffed in the air. You are not the mango I had
for breakfast nor the warble of the sandhill crane at dusk, not the
spider I could not bear to kill nor the pull of light through the window.

—
Pam Vap is a high school English teacher in Phoenix, Arizona. For her MFA, she received an Outstanding Thesis Award from the University of Nebraska for her book nightwriting. She was a first place winner in the Nebraska Writer’s Guild Poetry contest, a first place Goodreads poetry winner, an Allen Ginsberg Poetry Honorable Mention, and a finalist in the Prime Number Award for Poetry. She has recently published in Poetry East, RavensPerch, Pudding Magazine, Poetry on the Plains, DASH, and Glacial Hills Review.

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Have you read these poems:
What We Thought Was Ours by Elizabeth Brulé Farrell
Stock by Mary Makofske

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