Aaron Poochigian: The living will

Too grizzled now to play the wunderkind,
too apt to sit where I have often sat,
I, Aaron Vaughn Poochigian, now that
my nose has thickened and my hair has thinned,

do hereby most imprudently rescind
the rulebook I propounded, all my sessile
growths and impediments, so that, a vessel
beholden only to the waves and wind,

I may be free to drift out of the bay.
Hereafter I shall whiff the fragrant coasts
of Araby, Dundeya, and Cathay

and, further out, beyond the round world’s spalling
margin, hear Odysseus’s ghosts
squeaking like hinges, hear the Sirens calling.


Aaron Poochigian is the author of the verse novel Mr. Either/Or (Etruscan Press) and the poetry collection Manhattanite (Able Muse Press).

This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 37 Number 7, on page 27