///P. SCOTT CUNNINGHAM : POETRY

The Center's inaugural Writer-in-Residence, P. Scott Cunningham, looks at poetry as one conversation where his personality, concerns and mental processes are always present with real emotion. He is the founder of the University of Wynwood, a nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing contemporary literature in Miami and the director of O, Miami. Cunningham has a BA in Religious Studies from Wesleyan University and an MFA in Creative Writing from Florida International University. He has been published nationally including works in the Harvard Review, Roanoke Review and The McSweeney's Joke Book of Book Jokes (Vintage, 2009).

Knight Writer-in-Residence
June 1, 2011 to June 30, 2011, and July 19, 2011 to August 20, 2011

Poems About Concentration For People Who Can’t Concentrate
from Pank Magazine, Summer 2010

Imagine a deer in headlights.
Loop that image.
Now imagine watching the loop.

You’re at your desk.
You can’t concentrate.
Imagine if not concentrating
was concentrating.

That time you took drugs
and thought a piece of tin foil stapled to the wall
was a fish tank. But why
was there a piece of tin foil stapled to the wall?

Two people, naked, in a gondola
suspended over Mt. Blanc.
Lightning striked the tower, shorting the wires.
Wind and snow shake the gondola.
The two people are you and your infant daughter.

You’re trying to think about your child
but you keep thinking about yourself.
Imagine you’re the child.

Imagine you’re a gondola in a blizzard.
Imagine the blizzard is inside the gondola.
Let go of the wire.