This week on Next Line, Please, contributors responded to a prompt which asked for two stanzas, both ending with the phrase, "I could be wrong."
Diane Laboda’s “Sabbath” provides awesome tension and complexity around layers of sin:
It was your idea to speed-stack hay
on this blistering July Sabbath, high-noon sun
already dripping off corrugated roofs and bodies,
to hose down behind the barn, wash away
evidence of sinful industry. But I could be wrong.It was your idea to pile our clothes
far away on the last wagon, so when
Aunt Clara came by to bring pastor’s condolences
we were as God created us, red-faced
and headed for hell. But I could be wrong.
And it appears that next week's prompt was inspired by one of this week's winning poems, Millicent Caliban’s “Relative Certainty” which cleverly applies the phrase to teenage girls, Hamlet, Adam and Eve, the Trojans, and Columbus:
She’s only 14; this infatuation won’t last.
Don’t worry, Claudius, he’ll soon snap out of it.
My faith in her is absolute. Nothing could shake it.
Don’t be silly, there’s no such thing as witches.
Of course, I could be wrong.He surely won’t mind if we take just one bite.
They’re obviously seeking reconciliation by sending us a gift.
No doubt we’ve reached an island off the coast of India.
The sea is calm, the sky cloudless. No reason to be anxious.
Although I could be wrong.
Hint hint: the ghost of Hamlet exists in your future, if you so choose to face next week's prompt, which can be found on the American Scholar's page along with the full post!
--Virginia Valenzuela
