On Plagiarism
You do what harm? I’d call it literary
masturbation, but let’s not knock an earnest
art: self-love—your own artillery
or sniper’s trigger. Fellow poets sneer at
not so much the theft but molestation
of the Muse. Your touch perverts the words,
left cheapened on a satinet loom.
Yet no one ought to put you to the sword.
Some silky day, you may find your flow,
the village cold, your poems crying wolf.
*
Nicole Caruso Garcia’s full-length debut OXBLOOD (Able Muse Press) recently received the International Book Award for narrative poetry. Her work appears in Best New Poets, Light, Mezzo Cammin, Plume, Rattle, RHINO, and elsewhere. She serves as associate poetry editor at Able Muse and as an executive board member at Poetry by the Sea, an annual poetry conference in Madison, CT. Visit her at nicolecarusogarcia.com.
Wicked, Nicole.