Astigmatic Abecedarian

all my young life I saw invisible
birds                                                     (leaves in the wind)
                                     circled by coronas and sun
dogs.
excuse my french but without my
freaking
glasses,                                     my
                                     hefty prescript
             ion
jar-bottom-ed
            kryptonite
                        lenses, I’
m i
n dreamland    all        day.
              o
please don’t ask specific
questions                                                         or
            refer to something
say
tacked on a wall because
unless I can hold this              something
veryclosetomyeyeball
                                                 we see e
xactly the same thing but
                                                 yet to me it’s
zilch zip zero.

Katharine Whitcomb is the author of four collections of poems, including The Daughter’s Almanac (The Backwaters Press/University of Nebraska Press), chosen by Patricia Smith as the winner of The Backwaters Press Prize. She’s the co-author of a faux self-help book, The Art Courage Program, published by Jaded Ibis Press. She is the recipient of a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University and holds an MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She has had work published in The Paris Review, Bennington Review, Poetry Northwest, Narrative, Kenyon Review and many other journals and anthologies.