Young Writers Society

10. A weather poem? In April? Groundbreaking.

The chill assaults my bare skin
Were we not burning just yesterday?
I ask the wind. It blows east without answering,
unable to tell stories about where it was
or where it dreams of going.
All it knows is the gradient of air pressure,
high to low
that’s where it goes,
an obedient soldier of the sky.

It’s rather silly of me to complain
About the weather when it’s just
Something I see outside my window working from home,
Like a slow motion painting
On these slow dying days.

11. a list of things i hate (in no particular order)

i. beds never stay made
am i the only one constantly fighting the corners of the bed to just stay on already? i'd blame my mattress but this happened even in college dorm rooms when the mattresses were paper-thin. sheet fasteners don't do a goddamn thing, so i am either hypervigilant to sheet movements or sleeping on a bare mattress like a heathen.

ii. counters don't stay clean
i was never good at cleaning up my messes. because step one is to stare at spilt milk like it's blood, like every transgression is equally sinful. people like my sister are capable of just grabbing a damn towel, but i can't do that until i stop being mad at myself for making the mess in the first place. how am i thirty-two and yet incapable of just not spilling milk?

iii. trash doesn't take itself out
it seems like a simple enough directive-just take the bag down with you the next time you go out. but the transition from bed to dressed to door is so scattered you forget this until you're halfway to your destination and then you could just take it out when you get home but you never ever ever want to go back outside once you've made it in the door, even on fair weather days.

iv. that dishes must be done daily
dishes shouldn't be this hard. my sister takes care of hers in minutes, so why do i let mine pile up until i'm at the point where i need to buy new spoons because i lack the spoons to wash the spoons i have? i see the sink pile grow, and i hate it, but trying to change habits after a few hopeful days is fruitless.

v. that love is more like dishes than a diploma
i have a master's degree. the diploma might be collecting dust, but it can't be taken away from me. i earned it through years of hell-whether it was worth it is questionable, but at least i got something out of it all. i won, just like the hero in the movies wins "the girl" for his heroic deeds. That "the girl" is not a piece of paper but a three-dimensional being with needs and wants that may diverge from the hero's is not even mentioned. we are sold this narrative, even as we see around us that true love is showing up, is navigating the webs of obligations and needs and wants of a family day in and day out. you can't let relationships grow dust on a shelf or glare at the problems hoping they will throw themselves into the dishwasher and come out sparkling clean before you have to even say a word. the dishes were brand new and gleaming once-how can they be dirty now just because we used them once, twice, a hundred times?

12. in which I finally write a chicken poem

no one suspected the wild woman
that lay behind the city girl's veil,
least of all the bride herself.

for years, she had been content
to dwell in the old drafty farmhouse
a mile outside a town one percent
of the size of her city. she was ready
for the quiet, the fresh air. the man wasn't great,
but the land and the chickens
were worth everything to her.

her heart became intertwined
with the birdseed she would throw her hens.
on the nights her husband was sleeping
somewhere else, she would dream of having wings.
although she couldn't fly, she could scream
as loud as she wanted. the clucks sounded more like her
than her own sweet farmers-wife accent.

ten years from her wedding night,
she put on her wedding dress to show
the hens. it still fit,
not that her husband would have noticed.

when he came home the next morning,
the chicken coop was wide open,
and all that was left of his wife
was a claw-torn dress and veil.

still she could not fly,
but she was free.

13. all i think about are standard deviations

what is the mean
of life at 32? statistics say
i should be married now, have a kid or 2.5,
be several sizes smaller, have kissed more
people, have wasted less years in school
for a dream that never made sense for me.

some deviations are standard, acceptable.
my IQ was several deviations above the mean
expected for an eight year old, and that meant
I would always be the good kind of outlier.

but mine are far from standard. the secret
twelve-year fight with a disorder that makes
men tremble at the mere name, bipolar.
the constant balancing acts of medications and sleep
and trying not fo fall apart over perfectly average
work weeks at my blessedly average job.

if i am below the bell curve, it is not
for lack of trying. though i can't imagine
a mean life is a nice one. is crawling up the bell
curve to reside with the masses the most
i can hope for?

Audio recording: https://voca.ro/1oELQDQSxNmr

14. This is not a poet’s depression

this is not a poet’s depression.
there is no melodramatic lament
for a love lost (though I am purposefully avoiding the cave of wonder-
ing if i can even love at all).
there is no flowering nostalgia
for some long-gone halcyon days
(even the sweetest ambrosia memories have bitter aftertastes).
there is just a too-large body
trapped between two monitors
and a phone all day
and then too exhausted
(though i have no right to be, with no kids or husband to mind)
to bother with living when I’m free (on nights and weekends
like an old cellphone plan).

Link to audio: https://voca.ro/15zUSbWndcPr

15. phosphenes-the colors or "stars" you see when you rub your eyes (the prompt was to describe this word without using it)

when i was younger,
in lieu of sleeping, i would press
my fist into my eyes,
fall into a psychadelic tunnel
of multi-colored light,
praying i might find my dreams
on the other side.

squeeze your eyes hard enough
and you might see me
in the colors as they capture
you, transport you to the land
of unconsciousness.

16. stories

have you ever told a story
that gets cut off before you get
to the god part, where your words
skid off course into secret obstacles
and names you dare not think of
in case you accidentally tell
the truth?

do your stories feel incomplete
without me, the way mine feel
incomplete without you?

Okay time to wrap this bad boy up. I'm a bit sad I didn't properly finish, but I like what I have managed to put together, and other people seem to as well, which is pretty neat.

17. let this be goodbye for now, not forever

i am forever in denial
that time is moving, that things are ending.
wasn't it just yesterday i was entering the high school
cafeteria for the first time, writing poems in my head
in the lunch line? wasn't i in the holmes hall study lounge just last night
playing apples to apples with friends i thought would be forever?
what do you mean that was over a decade ago, and i only
see them when i am forced to go on facebook?

i wake up perpetually hungover even sober, forever throwing up words
about spain, about grad school, about the many people
i never knew but claimed to love.
it's been a good five years since anything poetic has happened to me,
so i suppose it's not surprising i keep going back, no matter how many times
the words have made me sick.

perhaps i draw my stories out so long because i believe
that you won't leave me when we get to your door,
that you'll let me in because you want to know that badly
how the story ends. or at the very least, we'll meet again
and you'll beg me to pick up where i left off. this never happens,
and yet the delusion persists.

but if you are reading this, listening to me on my metaphorical
front porch (i'm a millennial, it will forever be metaphorical), i suppose,
despite all the decades of evidence otherwise, you want to hear the end
of the story. of course, i don't know that yet. i do know
that the monsth of poems is over, so we will have to return
in a new april, so new and yet so familiar.

i am sure new words will find me before then. all i have to do is remember
where the ones who want to hear them are.