Manually and late at night
I write poetry on paper towels*
In secret
And always with a Waterman
Fountain pen
Marbled blue but nib
Gone bent
My mother preferred
Her Underwood
That dark towering creature
With brassy keys like teeth
Pounding those keys
Was hard and one developed
A strange animal prowess
One could become a goddess in
The hands of an Underwood
*whose evidence of my indulgence
may be swiftly disposed of next day
shredded and water soaked
dark blue Waterman ink
circling down the sink
paper towel squeezed to wet ball
yet some have made it this far
even as footnotes
poems within poems.