All novelists incline toward autobiography,
Even the outright fantasists hiding behind
Their wizardry. They want to tell the truth,
A truth, a story containing great truths. Whether
A clever, layered, polyvocal bit of autofiction,
A ripping good yarn meant to sell well, a horror
Story curdling with the author’s terrors, all
Hold old temptations to attempt some truth,
Themselves a truth they feel a need to tell.
To do so, to get close, novelists must steal
From the best remnants of evolving memory,
Even as they’re buried to their bloodshot eyes
In research about other times and lives, even
As they’re dreaming of breaking nature’s laws.
(Anyway, nature doesn’t have laws, except
Insofar as we are natural, novelists included,
Making laws from forests of facts and spittle,
Natural as paper nests spit by paper wasps.)
Differing only in the degree of decomposition
From which memories are drawn, and also
In the daring with which they bury revenants
Of personal anecdotes whole in the loam
Of their fiction, novelists garden corpse selves.
A compositor, incompetent at coring stories,
At cooking, composting, or gardening, literally,
Pondered this beside another’s summer garden.
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