#MIDDLEBURY
I Was Minor
Olena Kalytiak Davis
In this life,
I was very minor.
I was a minor lover.
There was maybe a day, a night
or two, when I was on.
I was, would have been,
a minor daughter,
had my parents lived.
I was a minor runner. I was
a minor thinker. In the middle
distance, not too fast.
I was a minor mother: only
two, and sometimes,
I was mean to them.
I was a minor beauty.
I was a minor Buddhist.
There was a certain symmetry, but
it, too, was minor.
My poems were not major
enough to even make me
a “minor poet,”
but I did sit here
instead of getting up, getting
the gun, loading it.
Counting,
killing myself.
About this poem
“This poem is pretty major on clarity. I guess right this second I like how, perhaps in fidelity to its claims, it doesn’t scan. Or does it?” – Olena Kalytiak Davis
About Olena Kalytiak Davis
Olena Kalytiak Davis is the author of “The Poem She Didn’t Write and Other Poems” (Copper Canyon Press, 2014). She practices law and lives in Anchorage, Alaska.
The Academy of American Poets is a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, whose aim is to make poetry available to a wider audience. Email The Academy at poem-a-day@poets.org.
(c) 2016 Olena Kalytiak Davis. Originally published in Poem-a-Day, www.poets.org. Distributed by King Features Syndicate.
