I, Inside by Nolan Lee (16, New Jersey)*

you see this, how the poet abjures 
his naive lark in eden: 

          skull invaded, 
          a lockpicked safe— 
          voyeurs tucked in reflections 
          to turn on me my eyes, 
          to pin a mirror 
          to the lid’s inside— ​

---

and to kill my foxgloves, 
who’d been three days 
          glorious in the kingdom of the blind, 
demure pink bells, perfume, 
slim throats within their vases—now lurid on display
in their formaldehyde jars 
like catamite cadavers. 

i must repeat to myself: 
          purity and not pantomime 
and you must cease to be here, 

here at my sojourn meant for one, 
where froths varnish 
          the water’s looking glass 
          casting the sun and i, another, 
the natron underneath 
bone-white and bone-dry, 
umbrella like a sly nylon bird. 
here, where i am yet watched by 
the taciturn expanse of sand, 
the printless grains— 
          we’re married, now, without curtains, 

me and my takers, who took of me 

          the thoughtless nudities, 
          the library’s ensconce, 
          the room pristinely mine, 
          selflessness (for i’ve always two of us).
inhabited, intruded on 
my diary’s most private soliloquies; 
          for you, my poetry. 

only left themselves 
to strand me with, rather than solitude— 
           congress rather than silence to kill me. the throng
           set flush against 
shut lips and eyes, to kill me— it is the 
anxious wait before my ego’s curtain 
in stupid hope to be surprised, that’ll surely do it. 

before i emerge, born again 
           out of the keyhole for 
           the peanut-crunching crowd, 
           the commentariat’s cheers (though 
you are not the worst) and 
in applauded monologue do recant my kantian
           fantasies of noumena, 

           recant all external jealous gods 
           to creep inside the 
           sweetling mouth of 
           the foxgloves in my chest, 
           acquiesce my solitude to shades 

and learn what fools can never know: 
sights are to be seen and 
cannot not by they or we— a lovely foolishness, but
fools nonetheless. most fools are stupid; but 

           the going on hoping, 
           as if they’ve lives 
           to ever be their own? to readerless 
           write and deafly sing, pretend 
           that you are not there you 
           do not see? that is merely 
           irretrievable.