i'm just saying

You know that William Carlos Williams poem, “This Is Just To Say”? You probably read it in elementary or middle school, and may have been asked to write a riff on it. A couple of weekends ago, my organization sponsored a sort of mini retreat for people who lead writing workshops, and we got to write our own insincere apologies. Here’s mine, which AK did not find funny:

This is just to say
I cleaned up the plums
you left half-eaten
on the bedside table
purple crime scene
of stains beginning to set
hairy seed beckoning flies.
I know you
were still enjoying them
a momentary caesura
in sensual abandon
but if they were so delicious
you should have finished them
and washed the plate.

Here’s another, by real poet Craig Santos Perez:

Second Apology to the Lone Ethnographer

I have eaten
the preserved heads
that were in
the glassbox

and which
you were probably
saving
for science

Forgive me
they were mysterious
so savage
and so alone