Young Writers Society

1. Out of Breath

If spring break is a car on the tracks,
then the new quarter is a train
rolling too fast to stop,
crushing the car
beneath its wheels,
tearing apart metal
like it is
food to be
eaten and
spit
out.

2. Exhausted

My legs are jell-o;
I think they pass the jiggle test
that I use to test cheesecake.

My arms have weights tied on,
strapped to my biceps, wrists, and elbows,
while my fingers jitter like a sickly pianist’s.

Worst of all,
my brain sinks in my cranial fluid,
dense as lead,
making my whole head droop.

I love the format of your first poem, and I love how visceral your second poem is. I think my favorite line was "while my fingers jitter like a sickly pianists."

3. Lying to your mother

No, Mom.
I’m doing quite well, Mom.
I’m not tired, just busy,
‘cause class is a tizzy.
I’m fine, Mom.
I swear I’m alright, Mom.
You don’t need to worry,
but I’ve got to hurry.
There’s so much to do, Mom.
There’s so much at stake, Mom.
I swear that my future’s
like sewing up sutures,
every step so precarious,
like a clown on a tightrope, a little hilarious.
And sometimes I swear that my profs are nefarious.
The bile in my throat keeps on rising; it’s so effing perilous.

I’m.
I'm okay.
Mom.

4. Righteous Fury

Your teammate is a ray of sunshine and a buzzing bee.
She flits between the tables of your team,
checking in on progress,
bending over drawings, eyes wide with excitement,
while her voice lifts up and down in an aria of architecture.

Your teammate is rock solid, the tortoise in the tale.
He sits, quiet,
masterpieces blooming under his fingertips,
from vibrant, daring twists and tucks,
to perfect, orderly mazes of tiny beams and columns.

Your teammate is warmly frigid, as malleable and stiff as steel.
She sets a color-coded schedule on the wall,
gathers the group with a clap of her hands,
explains with so much gravity everyone falls into silent orbit,
and pushes towards the finish line.

And you had the gall to stay in your pretty white house,
with the decaying lawn on which you haze freshmen,
to get drunk,
to throw up under the string lights of a party,
and flip off your teammates. Literally.

5. Boring

Door shuts with a click.
I shuck off jeans, toss ‘em,
and pull on shorts that make a little swip swip
because athletic fabric be like that

I snap the week’s towel from its hook
and drop it into the laundry basket,
where it goes paff and drapes over my clothes.
Detergent joins in with a thud.
Dryer sheets are silent, like little white assassins.

Then I scrape the basket off the ground,
and the plastic grinds against the linoleum. Schkt.
I rest it on my hip, grunting,
And shove open the door again.

My weekends are very exciting.

6. Morbid Fascination

Apparently,
leaving your hand in curing plaster can give third degree burns.
Curing is an exothermic reaction.
Calcium sulfate mixes with water,
and after dissolution, crystalizes.
The change in state of matter generates heat.

But lordy,
I just want to stick my hand in the white goop,
watch it cling to my fingers,
a dangerous and perfectly tailored glove,
and play with the sun like Icarus.

7. Sunday Sonnet No. 1

The brainless toil of building leaves me free
to dream about our latest rendezvous,
to jitter in my seat with copious glee,
and wish upon a star I was with you.

Your freckles are the dots of tacky glue
I use to hold together cardboard sheets.
My pencil draws a truss, but I see you,
your frame so similarly strong and neat.

I long for your enthusiastic words,
which give, like scaffolds, me new scope and height
and buttress me until I am assured
that in my constructs, you too, find delight.

If only you could sit beside me now,
then with great life would my work be endowed.

8. Lonely

The studio has its dimensions painted on the walls:
neat, black serif numbers on a dirty beige.
It is twenty-five feet wide
. (seven-point-six meters),
fifty-five feet long
. (sixteen-point-eight meters),
and twelve feet tall
. (three-point-seven meters).

After the late dark of spring evening closes in,
ushering soft breezes through the open windows,
and my classmates have gone home to squeaky beds,
leaving their dirty studio shoes lined up in the hallway,
I sit on the black tarp in the corner,
my arm coated in plaster of paris
. (CaSO4· 2H2O),
scooping fine, white dust into a bucket of burbling water,
the only sound the rhythmic scoop-pour scoop-pour.

Out of sixteen-thousand, five-hundred cubic feet
. (four-hundred and seventy cubic meters),
ten cubic feet are plaster
. (zero-point-three cubic meters),
and one-point-five
. (zero-point-oh-four)
are me.
Alone.

oh my gosh! Your descriptions are so beautiful and vivid. I love this line so much

which give, like scaffolds, me new scope and height

9. Irritation due to Sleep Deprivation

To the idiot on floor four:
Please do not cook at two in the morning.

I know what you’re thinking.
“Oh, I was just using the microwave!
I had a late start this morning;
I was totally awake!”

You were not awake.

You burned something,
and the stench of smoke
made me gag as I walked into the building,
lit by the orange lights of a fire truck.
I wasn’t sure if the haze in the common room
came from sleep deprivation
and half an hour standing in the rain
clad in hastily pulled-on leggings and a hoodie,
or from your culinary disaster.

I hold you responsible for today’s fits of misfortune,
which include
losing my student ID,
forgetting to bring along my readings for class,
and dozing at my desk.

Sincerely,
a resident of floor five.

11. Too Tired to Write Poetry

The spring rain patters
on my window at midnight.
I walked home in it.

I really like the thing you're doing where you write about different emotions every day - I tend to get stuck in topic-matter ruts, too, so this sounds like a good challenge! I think you're definitely achieving it - Exhausted absolutely captures that heaviness of extreme tiredness, and the parentheses and precision in Lonely give it a good distancing effect that helps to heighten the feeling of aloneness.

I also really like Too Tired To Write Poetry - I really like spring rain, and sometimes a simple little haiku is all you need to spark an image - nicely distilled!