Little Boxes

A Short Sharp Shock

By the numbers there’s my driver’s license,

car registration, license plate, zip code,

various accounts, street address, birthdate

home, work, and cell phones, passport, credit cards

debit cards, PINs, social security

frequent fliers, internet passwords, stocks

checking, HMO, IRA, museums

library card, land and enneagram.

I know its a lot to remember, but

thank god i finally know who I am

~ Jim Woessner

The poem is something that Jim calls a ‘square poem’ - that is 10 lines of precisely 10 syllables each. It is part of a larger collection called ‘Little Boxes’ … a book that contains “a unique style of poetry in which each poem is a short story told in only 100 syllables.”

One hundred poems. Ten thousand syllables.

Loved it when it first came out. Still do and hope you do too.

It is of course a perfect example of something Oscar wrote over 130 years ago.

"Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life"

~ Oscar Wilde