“I talk with an edge and live on the fringe of a gritty city.  I write poetry because I was born this way.  An extra chromosome here, a missing one there…who knows why?  DNA is a funny thing.

I wrote my first poem when I was twelve.  It was about a pair of faded Levi’s lying beneath a lilac bush.  And it rhymed. I remember it clearly because the minute I finished it, I began worrying about where the next one would come from.

I’ve seen others who are similarly afflicted.  They’re the people you see walking around, always squinting at everything. It’s hard to tell if they’re actual poets or just suffering from undiagnosed myopia.  Real poets tend to hang out in crowded subways and all night diners. They drink a lot of coffee and suck inspiration from the passing carnival of life, while secretly yearning to wander alone beneath a sky as blue as the one in Arizona.  Because even in a crowd, a poet is forever doomed to feel like a lonely head in a roomful of hats.  Trust me— being a poet isn’t an occasional gig.  It’s your job for life.”  

Read Steele Fields poem, “Leaving.”  

Click here to read more work by Steele Fields.