Taste

By Jessica Laser

All my life I’ve asked my master

Why I am unable to choose

This sweet man or fancy shoes

Over this stranger, more difficult lover

And these expensive but practical loafers

And why I am unable to author

A book exhibiting my full potential

And have focused instead on inconsequential

Letters to strange and difficult lovers

Who by my letters were never changed.

I certainly haven’t been constrained

By terrible parents or trauma or poverty

And even if I had it wouldn’t explain

My propensity for misery

Anymore than it would my

Propensity for joy.

Maybe I’m just a procrastinator

As life is a procrastination of death

And each breath just a procrastination of breath

And friends a procrastination of work

And work a procrastination of love

And love a procrastination I’m just not above.

Copyright Credit: Jessica Laser, "Taste." Copyright © 2019 by Jessica Laser. Used by permission of the author for PoetryNow.

Source: PoetryNow (2019)