Thomas Fink

NONCE SONNET 10

                                                                Inter
                                                              minable
                                                                dialectics
                                                                    could be
                                                                        the only
                                                      rule                 that’s
                                                 lasted as              long as
                                              the building.        A central
                                           voice closes the                  book
                                     from which   we have                 been
                                  departing all term.   S/he             shreds
                               the roses brought to buy judg              ment
                            inflation.   “A fool will claim that            we ‘fail’
                         one who pays for our company. As         sessment
                    might delay or grant an invitation to re              tool or
                find a happy   detour.”   The judge supposes             they’ll
           see this as superior to    later    devastation tailing
        rewarded lack, but hasn’t one who poses as a slander
       ed jewel heard only “fail”? A shredded rose will suit the
    book’s blank cover. Embedded in each learner, I hope stren
  uously, along   with brute resentment of foreign criteria for ad
vancement, is a plank favoring abundant dialectics’ pungent fruit.



Thomas Fink's fifth book of poetry, Clarity and Other Poems, was published by Marsh Hawk Press in Spring, 2008. A Different Sense of Power (Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2001) is his most recent book of criticism, and in 2007, he and Joseph Lease co-edited Burning Interiors: David Shapiro’s Poetry and Poetics. Heather McHugh and David Lehman selected his poem, “Yinglish Strophes IX,” for The Best American Poetry 2007 (Scribner’s). His paintings hang in various collections.

 
 
 
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