Fist Poem by Dan Chiasson

It is impossible for me to remember
the cozy room I slept in as a child.
Somebody made my bed up to be paradise.
It was hard for me, a hard night, when I entered art.
The tendons in my wrist are visible.
What will I do now I have made this fist?
To loosen it feels weird, anticlimactic—
a misuse, a misunderstanding, of fists.

That's how it was with me that night.
And so, mysteriously, I lost my sweetness.
Weird, to feel intended for violence,
when what I wanted was an hour of rest.