Ghazal while attending AWP as Marci Vogel
by Erin Mizrahi
Marci cancels this year but gifts me her registration & I should expect this, how poets
are often so tired & in need of hydration & sunshine & the opposite of a Seattle
I have always been a terrible liar so I tell them at the registration booth as they scan my qr code, I tell
them this is not me, it is not me. They tell me they don’t care, they simply don’t care
& now I am walking the book fair as Marci Vogel & I think I could pass as a Marci
& I smile at the people wearing badges with names which are probably their own
Red Hen Press is so happy to see me, n+1 says I was their favorite 5th grade teacher
I am an imposter brining many small joys to this room so wide & white
The first conference I attend in years & I am somebody else & I proclaim, it is I Marci Vogel
& the rain stops & a stack of books curls up beside me & purr they wish they were mine
I splash through the halls, I am a fish in water but also out of water, as it were as the saying goes,
have I always had these fins, I don’t know, my tail knocks over the Paris Review booth
& everyone applauds, there are fireworks, what fine commentary, what timely performance art, here
is a book contract, here is a large bowl of strawberry starburst, here is a bell you can ring
& now I am recalling an art history lecture from undergrad, my professor’s laser pointer directed
at a slide with a bowl of persimmons, which she named the fruitiness of the essence of the fruit
& I’m sure I was all giggles, how silly, how I was so young & couldn’t see how nothing lasts & we’re
all pretending not to see the bright orange grief & how easily or not easily at all we can shed a name
Erin Mizrahi is a Pushcart nominated poet, educator and co-founder of the literary and arts journal, Cobra Milk. A recipient of fellowships from Asylum Arts and The Institute for Jewish Creativity, their writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Bending Genres, Sonora Review, Rogue Agent, Gasher Journal and elsewhere. Their collaborative micro-chap If We Break, Where We Break, How We Break is forthcoming with Ghost City Press.