Warts

I look over my poems and they are covered with horrible growths. Why did I not see it before? I smile dotingly as they slurp and slither in their ponds, I coo as they ooze with their sores. The slack faced ones I call 'straight forward'. The psychotic ones I call 'flights of fancy'. Most show evidence of some kind of syndrome, flat nosed and wide faced. These are my darlings - I send them off to school and stand outside their classrooms daring anyone to remark on their unremarkableness. Tonight we light the hearth and I gather them near. We sing the old songs and eat popcorn and I read to them from a book about dragons.

I don't place them on the flame.