Sculpting My Own

by

Jonathan B. Aibel

Supposedly Michelangelo
said it was simple—
just remove everything

that isn’t Jonathan.
Unfinished, I
stand in a pile of spalls,

all scratches and misstarts,
misspoken, knapped stone
like sand in a wave—

building, tearing
down—my hand granite,
my ear quartz,

I lack insight.
What to keep, what.

Jonathan B. Aibel, a recovering software engineer, lives in Concord, Massachusetts, the traditional homeland of the Nipmuc. His poems have been published in Barrelhouse, Chautauqua, Pangyrus, Lily Poetry Review, Cider Press Review, and elsewhere. Jonathan’s chapbook, Echoes of Uruk, was a semifinalist for the Tupelo Press 2024 Snowbound Prize. His collection, Soundtrack of Departing Clouds, is forthcoming from Lily Poetry Review Press in September 2026.