Sasha Ehrhardt

Essay on the Form

It is not dirty to write about the act of poetry. Anything in the world is a thing in the world.

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My dad's poet friend says that people do poetry all the time, and don't even know it.  

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The ocean vomits whales and the whales are full of words. The men with the dynamite come and the words are chunked, stinking, across the page.

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People realize they are doing poetry all the time, and upon doing so they grab a chunk of whale and swallow it whole.  There are words in their guts now, roiling,  cramping, demanding dynamite.

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The notion of art is sick of itself, drinks cheap liquor in seaside bars. When you sit down next to it, it slurs that fucking poet, slick in whale-grease and gunpowder, full of words for me.  Writers, all whale-food, all whale-eaters, all dynamiters.

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If your voice is like the bowels of the whale-eater and your meter like the wave that throws the whale into the world, the poem is still the words in the whale, demanding to be seen for being someplace they shouldn’t.

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It is not dirty to be in a whale’s belly.  If you light dynamite, you will see the words inside by the light of the fuse.

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People are swallowed all the time, and don't even know it.