False Impression
Bruce McRae
Every word is true.
Every incident happened.
All conversations are verbatim.
I write the word ‘chicken’
and a Rhode Island Red appears.
I coin a memory
and the dead have risen
from their bed of lye and roses.
You can’t kid a kidder, kid.
You can’t con a con,
and a poem is a three-card trick.
A poem is a bomb
in a bus station locker.
A poem is an angel
at the foot of your bed.
A real blood-and-guts angel
shaking her head
in reticent befuddlement.
You ask her a question.
Graciously, she smiles,
yet refuses to answer.
Bruce McRae, a Canadian musician currently residing on Salt Spring Island BC, is a multiple Pushcart nominee with over 1,600 poems published internationally in magazines such as Poetry, Rattle and the North American Review. His books are The So-Called Sonnets (Silenced Press), An Unbecoming Fit Of Frenzy (Cawing Crow Press), Like As If (Pski’s Porch) and Hearsay (The Poet’s Haven).