Category Archives: Poetry

End of April 2024: Poem for You

Hi out there. April is National Poetry Month and also National Make Sophie Incredibly Busy Month. April is also my yearly reminder to never let people forget I majored in Creative Writing. So here is a poem for you from my most recent zine. It is my favorite of the few poems I have written in the last couple of months. [An Ars Poetica is typically a poem about the craft of writing and poetry itself.] Enjoy your spring! Rooting for you!

Ars Poetica

I'm going on Survivor
to write about nature.
It will be brutal,
but the wilderness calls. As Whitman says
in "Song of Myself,"
these are the days that must happen to you.
Out here I am born, winds
slice like machetes
and the sun is my flint,
but my team is so sick of me
I hear them plotting all day:
Why do we keep the poet around? 
She works so hard, 
but she is not strong.
I say, Do you see the blue hermit crab
inhabit a room
to inhabit itself? 
Don’t you know "stanza" means "room"
and the sky is a house?
So they vote me off 
and I leave on a boat, now
I write this to prove
I am still from the world,
my poems and the waves
both taking me back.

Resolution

When I brush my teeth I think about dying
and how the seafloor's dissolving
and how it rains a blanket 
so we stay inside, my posture 
as bad as a gallon of water.
Dad voiced a half-thought
It is good to wake up—
He thought of the lake, saw the news
and stopped. The year so far
is taro chips, movies,
"The Leanover," 
and accepting at last 
that I am not a good reader. No, I am 
not ready to enter the world again.
Will a good jacket cure me?
A phone call for once?
A frozen swim? Will the fish in the trenches 
know I am better? I'm relentless,
the shaker, moving the clock,
all to say 
at the end
that I loved it.

Direct Address

I take every thought of you to the very end
like a train, or a space shuttle, idle
and warming the dark side of a planet, a phone book
under my feet and a cold pulse against my sore arm, today
I understood how sadness can be called a "gulf";
how karaoke may be the closest I come to another me;
how to peer off the cliff of my mind; how to devour books on the floor; 
how Juliet and Romeo should have really talked it out;
how every person makes every other person disappear;
how the coldest stars in space glow red, red, red; how
post offices are either closed or too crowded; how I can handle everything
but I am good at nothing; how I love outer space and the seafloor
and never want to be scared of you; the ocean stirring itself forever;
I take every thought of you to the very end.

Survival

In a zombie movie you panic
and clamor for paper. Blood(?) 
seeps through the door but 
you need to write a friend 
and just can't put it off. 
You fumble with the address 
(the seven is a two) and may not live
to find a stamp, but 
why else be alive now? 
Why else put your pen to paper 
in search of some words 
that you know will not do? 
Still, you scribble
I remember feeling ill 
with love 
for everything 
and you
then stare at the page 
while sunrays die into you 
like rain, for sometimes it's dusk 
when the world looks most rosy
with ideas and justice 
and you notice at last how
your forearm is gone, 
lopped off for a mile 
while you were still
in your head 
with a warm memory.

[Note: I am finishing editing this poem and posting it quickly to avoid self-censoring too much. This one is a little bit wacky, but I love movie tropes; I love writing letters; I love sunlight, and I love memories that make me pause for a minute. I think romanticization and dystopia go well together. Life can feel like that sometimes!]

Reverb

Everyone returns. Lately 

I cannot stay awake enough,

the coffee eats itself to bits,

I missed the blood moon

and blamed the weather. Turns out

I missed the rain too. No, 

it's true. I cannot keep my mind

from clouding up with knots,

vitamins, pine needles, 

and futurisms. A tough word,

futurisms. I don't mind. 

Nothing makes me more sure of time

than the solemn close of the year

for this is just for now. The sound:

an open window in the living room,

water running, another person,

a plane overhead, and then,

The Planets, by Holst, everyone 

trying again for a feeling. Oh

how the day feels slow

waiting for you, waiting for cold air.

Yes, I missed the cold air.

January

I am not vicious
I love to stare
when light hits the room across the street 
as if by an alien sun.
I like to think those people get the kind of sleep I crave 
as I move my pothos to the floor
or back to the sill. 
I hope for peace 
and finally heat 
but time hasn't yet come 
for me: thoughts fall like marbles 
and dry hands press air,
It is still only winter
and we wait in our corners,
I am a cold planet 
pruning and crying,
killing and dying.

Time Warp New Year

 I have been hungry to write this poem 
 ever since November clipped the days 
 blue and short. The horrible thing is that…
  
 I walked past the General Grant Memorial
 defending a song by keeping it on, pausing only
 to remember when there was no snow.
  
 Two days ago a man catcalled me saying
 Hey! Relax!
  
 Some things are just human, like never drinking
 enough water, or always choosing the bench which
 faces the sun.
  
 Or wanting to feel new and different. As I sat there,
 a man threw snow at a tree and left walking west
 in the other direction.

Untitled (In Winter)

 Last year around this time it was blueish and wet,
 the same forks in the same rough road. The sun 
 is soft now, frugal with light. If I could jar it I might
 grow whole, more humming, more snap! But no,
 the walk home is like crying on a train: all for show.
 All now thinking about suffocating in a cave,
 a drawer, a warm car… must be so miserable
 to seize your own breath, how the tongue can find
 nothing to draw on, nothing moving and supple
 like memory. These leaps are no accident, there are 
 bright months, faint months, lovely months, months pulled taut.
 There are weeds on every corner and flowers
 on every other. Is there a right time to make a friend?
 Some new destination to move slowly toward?
 We watch deciduous trees then become them,
 mistaking empty with sleep and briefly with red.