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  • 25 Lines or Fewer

Figure

By Robert Wrigley

You want a piece of me
to see, from the flesh of me,
a flesh from within me
no one’s ever seen, not me,
nor the mother or the lovers of me.
A piece that will have been me
but then no longer me,
instead a synecdoche of me,

or possibly metonymy,
a figure of speech of me,
in contiguity or association with me,
a part for the whole of me,
a sliver that once was me,
so you might perceive the end of me.

Poet Bio

Image of Robert Wrigley

Robert Wrigley was born in East St. Louis, Illinois. He was drafted in 1971, but was discharged as a conscientious objector. Wrigley is the first in his family to graduate from college, and the first male for generations to escape work in a coal mine. His poems are concerned with rural Western landscapes and humankind’s place within the natural world, and he aims to “tell all the truth, but make it sing.” 

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