Mike Puican
Keeping Track
You can't manage what
you don't measure.
–Peter Drucker
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has,
in his lifetime, taken more
than one million shots
at a basketball hoop. I
have written over six
hundred thousand words.
And you, reader, have
taken one hundred million
breaths—at least.
My barista has drunk,
or at least tasted, over
twenty thousand cups
of what he serves every day.
This is the long view.
*
I have (so far)
reinvented myself
a dozen times–
my previous
selves
unrecognizable even
to my closest friends.
*
In the last two lines,
I have looked up
at someone walking
through the café door
six times,
now seven.
you don't measure.
–Peter Drucker
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has,
in his lifetime, taken more
than one million shots
at a basketball hoop. I
have written over six
hundred thousand words.
And you, reader, have
taken one hundred million
breaths—at least.
My barista has drunk,
or at least tasted, over
twenty thousand cups
of what he serves every day.
This is the long view.
*
I have (so far)
reinvented myself
a dozen times–
my previous
selves
unrecognizable even
to my closest friends.
*
In the last two lines,
I have looked up
at someone walking
through the café door
six times,
now seven.
--
Mike Puican’s debut book of poetry, Central Air (Northwestern Press), was published in 2020. He’s had poems in Poetry, Michigan Quarterly Review, and New England Review among many others, and he won the 2004 Tia Chucha Press Chapbook Contest for 30 Seconds. He teaches creative poetry to incarcerated individuals at the Federal Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago and is a mentor in the PEN Prison Writing Mentorship Program.
Mike Puican’s debut book of poetry, Central Air (Northwestern Press), was published in 2020. He’s had poems in Poetry, Michigan Quarterly Review, and New England Review among many others, and he won the 2004 Tia Chucha Press Chapbook Contest for 30 Seconds. He teaches creative poetry to incarcerated individuals at the Federal Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago and is a mentor in the PEN Prison Writing Mentorship Program.