Young Writers Society

i hate
that my neck
looks like a dancer's
and that
i cannot dance
and that
flowers are constantly
half-buried.

there is a small house
filled with heat
by the ramp up to the parking lot
outside the e-mart
ten minutes away from my house.

we drove through
tonight
and the woman who works
in the heat-house in the winter
bowing as each car drives in and out
was crying the entire time.

you
are a vase
and you are pouring yourself
into the arms of someone years away
and i am watching you and i am another vase
and i am keeping all myself inside of me for a far off day.

if i lie to my mother
and don't call her
and leave her silent for six months
until her birthday,
is it a gift to call her then?

in her letters she tells me we need to talk,
but i want few things less
and if i was born from her,
why do i feel so alone when i think of her

and more at home looking at wooden walls?

Can you imagine how to feel
your mouth move, warm
and soft, without sound attached?
I do not know where my love
breathes, eats or sleeps,
just that when his mouth moves,
my words come out.

My mind is the green of
nail polish remover
spilled on black ink
before it dries.

content over closure.

my mother locked the doors
and changed the key
while i was away - medicinal
recreational pardonable -
i latched my key and turned
the sound of breaking
my metal and hers
together so permanently
left the mashed entrance
to itself and left
myself to myself
on the way out of the garden
she said - see that you don't
back here again
punctuated by the backdrop
car pop that regulates city
temperatures.
tomorrow we will try again

poem poem poem
post-modern as balls
meta meta meta
Hannah and Pengu are full of sap

I am
basically
a tree.


I am
acidically
alive.

Before a screen,
my mind is empty,
but as I extract iron
from African dirt,
I weave a thousand stories
that I can't write down.

I don't know what to say
when things go wrong,
like they have today,
and yesterday, and beyond.
My lips are chapped with sorry
I didn't say, and won't
because insincerity is worse.
Isn't it?

Smooth silk ties
wind gently to her ankles,
sewn into the soft slippers.
I watch the slow dance
and turn and leap
and imagine her grown,
gliding across stages,
their audiences, their hearts.
When the ties fray, losing
tension and shine, we buy more.
Every week a new pair of block
slippers, throwing the curved,
stained shoes out
like so much shame, all for one
more dance. breaking her toes
in the shape of birds.

little by little
we let our bodies collide more and more
and some day soon
i will stop caring what they think.

I gave up poetry when my hands were tired,
thin from all work and no play, the callous
of pen and key still hard and shapeless;
a deformation of character.
Slept for days, mumbling curses in cursive,
fingers cramped and clutched to my sides.
The withdrawal hit hard and fast;
thick pulse at my neck beating so it hurt
hot and sharp to my collarbone.
I spoke in riddles and kissed walls,
touched hair that shone or was damp,
crushed cans under my bare heel
just to know what it felt like,
and how the blood spread thin
into the creases of my body.
When finally I held my breath
so long my spots became darkness,
I pressed pen to page
and gutted myself into being.

today i straightened
my usual curls
just to peeve
a cynic.

of course, my spite
was thwarted
by "torrential
winds" -
goes to show you what happens
when i rebel against the
grain.

a boy told me once
that i looked
good in the wind,
and today
i decided to use
that line in a novel
someday.

and then, i wondered,
what if the
wind grew to
such an intensity
that it flung
vehicles onto
the roof of my
school gym?

"oh, wait,
that's called a tornado,
idiot."