David Breeden

I was finishing a manuscript
I was calling Ice Cream
and Suicide. That’s the
way I was seeing the
world just then—melting

everywhere. Hard-edged
ways out. Living in my
mind. Some war or other
all over the news. Opening
the file. Arranging the

poems. Typing a table
of contents. Revise.
Rethink. Rearrange.
Rewrite. I could do that
with my poems. Unlike,

you know . . . Ice Cream
and Suicide. Those looked
like my choices then.

Or opening that file and
revising a poem instead.