Theme for English 4391 and other poems
Theme for English 4391
“Go home and write a page tonight. And let that page come out of you – then it will be true.”
isn’t it reasonable to want
to be different than i am –
there was once a little girl –
i don’t remember her name
now, hardly remember my own
through the hazy wisconsin weather,
swirling storms of inxs and talking
heads, sugar ray telling us “someday–”
but isn’t each one of us nameless &
obscure, since it was decided for us
that the world would end before
we were fully grown, before we
could change – i need something
to hold on to & a little bit of time
to feel human again, while my life
is written inside my elbow, searing
ink into marrow – someday this will be
long ago, when we have already settled
into who we are, soft as coming home
& sad as that, too – the sweaty warm
keys cling to my pocket lining – part of me
knows we exist for our own safety – summer
at my house & still i miss orion – i know
i’m saying one thing & meaning another,
but isn’t that what we all do, he did it too,
i remember him differently, memory a dimly
fogged glass that’s been read too many
times to make sense from any perspective,
something tea leaves can’t discern & don’t
want to – the unknowability of another’s mind.
self-hate
my second mind mocks me
from the shadows shown gray; i am not
who i say i am. but i will hold
your suitcase if you pull mine, you
with your cracking elbows & dreams
that slip
below, you with twelve hundred
half-broken pencils, looking for a way
to bridge the gap between here & forever,
the cousins christened hate & love pulling
closer, alone by night, hidden by day.
i am you, for as far as i can throw myself.
i can imagine myself now: i shed
my skin, blueberry irises flashing
sorry, we’re closed until the record
drops out of this everlasting loop
of pits & pain, from sour to sweet.
the raspberry seed rots in my molar cap
as the brake lights behind me glow.
again, the sky bruises as a peach,
turning my cheeks freckled strawberry.
my hands are climbing the mountain range
made of my spine –
up, i shiver,
hold my bent ribs, reshape & correct
the divot above my left kidney.
my unreliable legs have pushed
me to the ground, but i cannot
hate what moves me to the stars.
a sestina for the rain, my bones, my soul
i want to let my brain alone for once—
if you catch me on the right
day, i’ll have to come clean.
my delicate wrist is easy to snap;
the fragility of my skeleton will pull
my skull to the ground; the rain
drenches my sheets. take the shape of rain
while wanting might and dark just once,
wanting to resist my ego’s pull.
there is an acute angle stemming right
through my frontal lobe, ready to snap
my eyes shut. storms can clean
or mutilate peace, destroy the clean
i once knew. out of the rain
the bush burns and my shoulders snap,
shake and warm what is left. once,
the angle expanded to the right,
and my spine succumbed to the pull
of the dirt. my spine and mind pull
in opposite directions, leave my body clean
and pure in the road, cars in the right
lane braking around my body in the rain.
my brain betrayed me once,
and now my bones pop and snap
when i stand. this week the cold snap
crawled through my kneecap to pull
at grief. the myth of forty days once
held me over, a flood to wash us clean,
to let the evil drown in endless rain,
but i’m not convinced god has the right
to condemn his own children, right?
if i truly believe that i can snap
out of it, is it confirmed that the rain
would save me? is it possible to pull
myself from hell, to break and clean
with my own might, just this once?
my new right iris has no pull
on my mind as i snap, a cut clean
through flesh and rain, for once.
