My Life

American Poetry Review, The, May/Jun 1998 by Wenderoth, Joe

Somehow it got into my room.

I found it, and it was, naturally, trapped.

It was nothing more than a frightened animal.

Since then I raised it up.

I kept it for myself, kept it in my room,

kept it for its own good.

I named the animal, My Life.

I found food for it and fed it with my bare hands.

I let it into my bed, let it breathe in my sleep.

And the animal, in my love, my constant care,

grew up to be strong, and capable of many clever tricks.

One day, quite recently,

I was running my hand over the animal's side

and I came to understand

that it could very easily kill me.

I realized, further, that it would kill me.

This is why it exists, why I raised it.

Since then I have not known what to do.

I stopped feeding it,

only to find that its growth

has nothing to do with food.

I stopped cleaning it

and found that it cleans itself.

I stopped singing it to sleep

and found that it falls asleep faster without my song.

I don't know what to do.

I no longer make My Life do tricks.

I leave the animal alone and, for now,

it leaves me alone, too.

I have nothing to say, nothing to do.

Between My Life and me,

a silence is coming.

Together; we will not get through this.

Joe Wenderoth's first book of poems, Disfortune, was published by Wesleyan University Press in 1995. These poems are from a second book, I Cannot Make The Sound, which he has recently completed. A long poem, The Endearment, is forthcoming this fall as a chapbook from Shortline Editions. Wenderoth lives in Mt. Horeb, Wisconsin, where he teaches part-time at Madison Area Technical College and fills vending machines.