The Writer’s Life

To be a writer is to apply lotion to one’s forehead

to sing untranslatable lullabies to Brussels sprouts.

Writing in sunlight is a good way to get a tan.

Be kind to the commas,

like you they would rather be curled up in fetal position.

If you plan to write about sex,
make sure you’ve had it,

at least once.

If you plan to write about politics,
make sure your poem

is softer than an eyelid,
louder than a nuclear volcano.

The Joke

The last joke in the world finds itself in the womb of a pregnant Jamie Lynn Spears. “Knock.
Knock.” It bangs against the uterus walls. No one answers. Terrible silence rules. The video
feed from the Second World War is projected on the outside of a wiggling fallopian tube.

Bodies. Wire. Burning. Ash.

Before it was a fetus, the joke had wanted to be a poem. It used to watch the lyrics line up
between the toy boats in the still lake. It envied their decorum, the way their sails billowed
when the children blew.

Poem in Favor of Joy

I was happy
to be empty
a nude economy

oh, for you,
you alone,
I ended

my lifetime
ban on
men

let’s just
say the DNA
island ends
here

Joanna Fuhrman is the author of three books published by Hanging Loose Press, Freud in Brooklyn, Ugh UghOcean and Moraine. Her new book, Pageant, will be published by Alice James Books in November 2009. She teaches poetry and creative writing at Rutgers University and in public schools.