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logocentric // gale acuff

Another blank page and the urge to fill
it. Sometimes when I do I don't see the
letters. Instead, it's like I'm looking at
one of those optical illusions—what
do you see, birds or fish? Watchful watchers
see both, if not simultaneously,
then one at a time but damned quickly, wing
becoming fin so fast that birds swim, fish
fly. Well, that's nearly nine lines done. So what's
next? Always the beginning. I go back

to mine and it's impossible to fill it all
—if I could I'd have a different kind of
blankness, not white but the color of my
ink. Red. Black. Blue. I'd have to start again,
with a white pen, say, to bring it all out,
whatever it is I'm trying to say
with words, that purer writing, as fire is
to heat and light, or a flame tamed to wick.
I showed this poem to a friend. It's a poem

about nothing, she says But I like it.
It's a starving baby. It's a lost child.
It's a lonely old man. It's a student
who flunked the bar. It's a doctor sued for
malpractice (he's going to lose, too). It's
a picture of your parents making love,
if you can call it that. A refugee.
Someone fired or laid off or who didn't
get the job. Parents who want a child
but they can't conceive. Editorial
cartoonist who can't draw. TV dinner,
the low-budget store-brand sort (mean patty,
green beans, stewed apple dessert). Powdered milk.
Bouillion cube and a cup of warm water.
Generic cigarette. Off-brand house paint.
Well, yes, I say. But I made it myself,
I add. I'm proud of it. I worked hard. When
you work hard, I say, you never fail. I
look into her eyes. There's plenty of pale
around her pupils. I reach for my pen.
I like it, she says. She doesn't mean it
but she means something else even better.
Keep writing, she says. Practice makes perfect.
She smiles encouragingly, if shyly.
In all but words that means she loves me, and
I don't mean romantically, but how
God loves—and it's a good story—enough
to cross us up and rewrite history.