The Awk Word

The Awk Word

The awk word just sticks out, jabs the reader in the eye,

and never in a good way. The awk word leaves all

to be desired, all stones unturned, well enough undone.

The awk word drops like a shard between a hard place

and a harder place. When one chooses the awk word,

there are no fireworks, no boom, no boon, no boost,

not the gleam, gloom, glamour, or glimmer of the light

that ought to shine through ink; instead, a smudge marks

the wrong turn of a drafthand stumbling from boulevard

to bramble. The awk word forces the reader’s pen

to the verge to scrawl what should emerge only

in a squawk from the craw of a crow or a raving raven.

A clipped cry in a wilderness of rock, riven by ragged

scrub and brush, the awk word descends from on high, one

of many ends or odds plunging dumbly to crush a skull.

Eric Paul Shaffer