Updike never sold me a day,
but I can get lost in his descriptions.
Similarly, pages of Faulkner can
bury me in dialogue.
I can coast along the erasure
of a graphic novel about Derrida.
Or I can get lost in Billy Collins’
description of getting lost in a poem.
Or listen to the verse conversation
of James Tate.
Then what race occurs
to construct my own fiction, to view
and understand the fictions others
are creating, even as I walk by them,
even maybe about me.
