**A Found Poem from The Great Gatsby
By K. Hutchinson
“What a Grotesque Thing, a Rose”
Suddenly he came alive
to me, as if stepping off of a
greeting card into a new reality,
as if being born. He had been
delivered from the womb
of his own purposeless splendor.
Hidden in the darkness of
the still and moonless night,
I watched as he stretched
his arms toward the dark water.
He was trembling, murmuring.
He believed he was alone.
I imagined how a slight
expression of bewilderment
clouded his trusting eyes,
as though a faint worm of doubt
had begun to grow, to gnaw.
Was it all a colossal illusion?
No amount of fire or freshness
can challenge what a man
can store up in his own
ghostly heart. No one knows this
as well as I – standing buried
in my own valley of ashes.
And so we will light candles again,
pointlessly. He for the dream
of a love that never was,
and I for my own ceaseless
capacity for wonder,
that men should love at all.
** Bolded sections are quotes from the novel.