Poetry, Seth Kronick
If you look at a lightbulb long enough,
just as it is turned on,
you’ll realize that it keeps getting brighter and brighter
until it doesn’t,
Or maybe it’s because
you were just staring at a light in the first place
that you now see
less of the bulb and more of the light.
It kind of reminds me
how a poem
is just a scramble
of letters,
but a scramble of letters
makes up the words
which make up the images
which make up the poem.
My dear grandmother,
under a bright, clear sky,
was the first person to reprimand
my staring at the sun.
It would hurt my eyes,
just like what she said
about looking cross-eyed—
I’d “stay that way!”
. . . still looking towards the light, pondering
about the things that we write on,
the things we shed light on
are the things we can’t leave in the dark.
Seth Kronick is a poet from Southern California. His poetry has appeared in journals such as Trash Panda, Frogpond, Poetry Pea, and Papers Publishing among other publications. He is currently pursuing a B.A. degree in Creative Writing from CSULB.