The Poet’s Occasional Alternative

by Grace Paley

I was going to write a poem
I made a pie insteadit took
about the same amount of time
of course the pie was a final
drafta poem would have some
distance to godays and weeks and
much crumpled paper

the pie already had a talking
tumbling audience among small
trucks and a fire engine on
the kitchen floor

everybody will like this pie
it will have apples and cranberries
dried apricots in itmany friends
will saywhy in the world did you
make only one

this does not happen with poems

because of unreportable
sadnesses I decided to
settle this morning for a re-
sponsive eatershipI do not
want to wait a weeka yeara
generation for the right
consumer to come along

–Read at St. Lydia’s on Monday, May 27, 2013