Opinion

It was a lean-to one could live in
so long as it never rained. It was
 
a grain of salt close up, looking
like a crystal, growing from itself
 
like an outcrop of land. It was a sail
opened in a storm. A memory lost.
 
A coin tossed at the wrong time,
declaring heads or tails. It had the air
 
of an aristocrat or the stench of a skunk.
No matter who bred it, it couldn’t be fair.
 
It wasn’t a buoy. It kept no one up.
It had the metallic notice of a gong.
 
It was a thoroughbred raced too soon,
or a setting moon, or a button lost or
 
undone. It only had one track and
when it sped up it was sure to derail.
 
It had a smile for a satellite
or a smirk for a son. Everyone
 
thought they recognized its face,
but, one by one, they were wrong. 

 

“Opinion” originally appeared in The Nation. Reprinted by permission of the poet.

 

About This Poem:

“‘Opinion’ was written as a push against the ways that we stand increasingly divided as time goes by due to the convictions we carry. I wrote it as an attempt to frame the complexities, conflicts, and conflations that exist alongside viewpoints and rifts.”

About The Poet:

Jennifer Militello is the Poet Laureate of New Hampshire. She is the author of the hybrid collection Identifying the Pathogen (Tupelo Press, 2026), named a finalist for the FC2 Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize, the memoir Knock Wood, winner of the Dzanc Nonfiction Prize, and five collections of poetry, including, most recently, The Pact (Tupelo Press/Shearsman Books, 2021). Her work has appeared in Best American Poetry, Best New Poets, American Poetry Review, The Nation, The New Republic, The Paris Review, and Poetry. She teaches in the MFA program at New England College.