Buffalo Bill Cody’s Letter to Himself

erasure from LETTER BY BUF BILL CODY, MARCH 21, 1902

Yesterday and today
should be closer:

this very thought should drift
all alone, thinks of all alone.

it must be a new life
my life, living false

I was another
man joined together

I live deceit,
my telling you of my life

then you grow more
enlightened.

I had no intent of
joining two persons together.

Life,
undo this mistake,

look forward to
every bit of separation.

This war, public,
I hope I may be done

with you. You, brother,
you manage me.

Alexis Ivy

Alexis Ivy is a 2018 recipient of the Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship in Poetry. She is the author of Romance with Small-Time Crooks (BlazeVOX [books], 2013), and Taking the Homeless Census (Saturnalia Books, 2020) which won the 2018 Saturnalia Editors Prize. She is co-editor of Essential Voices: A COVID-19 Anthology (West Virginia University Press, 2023) She lives in her hometown Boston, working as an advocate for the homeless, and teaching in the PoemWorks community.

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Algodón