Malaise: Un-Sonnet - Debra Providence

My work stinks.

It reeks, actually, of failure intermingled with

putrid pretensions of deeper knowledge.

It stenches of vain attempts to write

with the  Walcotts, the Morrises, the Brathwiates,

and rots in  a hole that is called

“the block.”

I wait, like the corbeaux for the line

that  quivers slowly then drops on a

sandy page. I feed, like the

maggot on what is beyond

redemption, nourished,

to produce nothing

myself.

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Debra Providence  (20th century) Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

Source: Writing "D"