Carl Phillips

Then like holding a mirror up to Apollo
and expecting his face there, when Apollo’s always been
faceless, obviously, being a god.
And the hand still holding the mirror up anyway.
And the face not showing.

We tend to think of a writing community as a community of writers, but I find I still prefer the community that was the only stable one for me as a kid moving from one town to the next: not writers, but what they’ve written, and what I myself write in unconscious conversation—again, though, not with the writers but with what they made, guideposts along/talismans for/sometime distractions from the quest that all writers share but must accomplish differently, the quest of making meaning with language, not because we were told to, but because there’s no choice in the matter. It’s just who we are, and just as mysterious.