The Last Elbow on the Left

Maria at 'alembic' is posting a work in progress, and in doing so, she touches upon that eternal conundrum of poetry: when to end.

So often I don’t write far enough into the poem, or I write way past the ending, in search of closure, instead of that pivot point in which my poem ends for me and at the same time opens up for the reader....

I like her take on the ending of a poem as a pivot point, the poem as one piece of a puzzle. The ending is not an ending then, but an elbow, knee, or some other joint: a smoky seedy bar on a late Friday night leaning precariously towards the person next to you while barstools tip towards an intoxication of words waiting for another round of calls and a last chance weekend of responses.