Janice Greenwood

If This Statement Is False, My Heart Is Beating


Whatever
I’m going to say

is not true. Winter exists.
The woods go on and on.

There are trees. Spring exists.
Long spines of ice grow fractal.

If this sentence is true, we live
in bodies of our own

devising. It is not true that we live
in bodies of our own devising.

The body is provable,
but everything that follows

cannot be proven. It is not true
that we live in (fill in the blank).

The next sentence is true.
The previous sentence was false.

We were sometimes lonely, sometimes afraid.
There is still sincerity.

This is false.
The first person is speaking,

though the second person may speak as well.
Only one sentence is true.

Only one sentence is false.
One sentence is as good as another.

Janice Greenwood’s writing has appeared in Baltimore Review, Cortland Review, Cimarron Review, and New England Review. Her poetry manuscript, After Mercy, was named a finalist for Four Way Books’ Intro Prize as well as for the John Ciardi Prize in Poetry from BkMk Press.