E.B. Moore writes that this week’s poem, “I With Myself an Argument,” was inspired by a cancer diagnosis and her initial urge to keep it secret, and that the poem started “as a silent conversation with myself, about secrets.” I love this poem’s play with words and coded symbols, and the fraught life-force energy that runs through it.

Moore is a metal sculptor turned poet, turned novelist, who has been a resident at The MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, and The Vermont Studio Center. She has published three novels: “Loose in the Bright Fantastic,” “Stones in the Road,” and “An Unseemly Wife,” and one poetry chapbook, “New Eden, A Legacy.” She is the mother of three, grandmother of five and lives with her partner in Scarborough.

I With Myself an Argument

Remember, terminal
that’s where I catch the bus, otherwise
not discussed— Don’t tell

the kids, don’t tell
neighbors close or far
or friends. But hell, no,

not another closet.
It’s that or brave
pervasive climes,

my new deficit deemed
unseemly and thus,
when we talk, we talk

of tigers—this Cat of cats
swallowed in the night, how else
might it slip where it slid, here
beyond my gated throat?

This feline downed
muscle by claw,
downed teeth and tail,

downed bone by bone
without
permission—

– E.B. Moore

Megan Grumbling is a poet and writer who lives in Portland. DEEP WATER: Maine Poems is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. “I With Myself an Argument,” copyright 2024 by E.B. Moore, appears by permission of the author.