Poetry Archive - Organized by Year
Freshman Year
11/10/2013
he took me to the park where he kissed a girl for the first time. the swing set where he asked her out had been torn down, freshly cut grass and a bench in its place. he held my hands as we walked through the neighborhood where he learned to ride a bike for the first time and the street corner where he met his best friend. this place is saturated with memories. I am a visitor here. I can smell the summer nights spent wandering around streets, down by the water, into the woods. if lights were placed at each landmark containing a significant memory of his adolescence, the town would glow with a constellation that looked like home. I could be a trained astronomer and still never understand the intricacies of growing up and growing roots; having a deeply instilled connection to the city in which I was raised. it is jarring to be in a new place and not have any sense of direction, when he has the city map etched in his veins. He said he felt nostalgic coming back, like he was greeting a former version of himself, but couldn’t quite find the right words to say. I don’t know what I would have said if we were in my hometown. perhaps I’d show him the rooftop of my friend’s house where we contemplated doing drugs, kissing boys, and what leaving for college would do to our friendship. maybe I’d tell him about the countless times I drove along the main road at night, constantly looking in my rearview mirrors just because the street lamps lined 145th like a runway, and I’d fly away in two months time. I’d most likely be a ghost, wandering the places I used to claim as my own, and wondering why it wasn’t hard for me to leave. wondering why I didn’t have as many stories as everyone else about their teenage years, wondering why I can only feel nostalgic about home when other people tell tales about their own lives, and never when I think of my own. |
12/27/2013
lessons in science i. Everything is energy. The sun, the trees, your body-- the way I look at you when you’re looking at your hands. ii. When two atoms get in close proximity of one another, two things can happen: They will move closer and closer until their positively charged centers repel each other with an increasingly strong force. They will never touch. Or, the atoms could collide. Turns out, they are more stable together than apart. They rest at the bottom of the potential well, swimming forever in their own energies. iii. I asked how you’d like to die: drowning in the ocean, or perishing in the desert. You said you’d take the water any day-- the sand would dry you to your bones. I argued, The sea is crueler than any desert: An endless expanse of water but none to keep you alive. You said there are certain creatures suited only to live at the bottom of the ocean-- come to the surface and they perish. You’d like to suffer the same way. Thermal convection rocking you to sleep while your bones shattered and your lungs collapsed on the sea floor. My reasoning was that in extreme cases of dehydration, people have been known to hallucinate. If I was going to die, I’d at least want to see you one last time. |
2/08/2014 (published in Bricolage)
The night after I told you I loved you, A man in your neighborhood committed suicide By injecting pure mercury into his heart. His x-rays were not released to the news stations, But his doctor said his lungs lit up Like the night sky, and his heart was the center Of a supernova. Roughly three thousand stars die every second, but this was only the third death this town has ever seen. The police would later find a dozen ancient Guns lining the man’s basement walls like the picket fence surrounding his home. Upon further inspection, the officers discovered cases upon cases of shiny new bullets, and A bottle of mercury (three quarters full)-- old fashion gun cleaner. Tucked underneath, His suicide note read: “Bullets would be Easier, but I don’t want to bleed. I want to glow.” You barely knew the man, the only real memory you had of him Was the night you found him picking Apples from his tree, one by one, And tossing them to the ground. He saw you peeking over the fence And explained that his wife had left. Apples were her favorite. The next week, the entire tree was gone, but his backyard was still riddled with rotting apples. Is that what love is? Nurturing when together, Destroying when apart? The whole block smelled for days. You didn’t want to do that-- Foster a star inside of you and then Collapse when it dies. Inevitable, you said. And you’d much rather Bleed instead. |
2/17/2014
How difficult it is to become: Most nights I feel like exploding From all the things I’m not. I lack, I burst at the seams. How tragic it is to want to be: I’m full of possibilities. If only I could figure out how to Unlock my bones and let them out. How maddening it is to believe: Atoms, that’s it. That’s all I am. I’m not made of poetry or hope. Yet, Even atoms can decay and become new. How terrifying it is to exist: I’m okay. I’m alright. Stars fill my lungs with each breath. I’m okay. I’m alright. I’m here. |
2/18/2014
so you’re feeling a little anxious i. your mind is a radio tuned to an empty station but someone insisted you listen in so you wait, letting the static vibrate your veins it has to make sense eventually it has to, and you’ll go numb trying ii. you asked the universe for a favor, you’d give anything in return please, you said, just this once the universe never responded it holds oceans together and keeps planets in orbit it is stronger than you and all things considered, the universe owes you nothing iii. talk to your best friends the way you talk to yourself tell them they’ll never be anything tell them they’re pathetic this is supposed to bring clarity and self-awareness, but it just makes you sadder iv. you look in the mirror too long every morning some people regard this as narcissistic, but you’re really just trying to figure out when your reflection got so judgmental v. distancing language, it’s called maybe if you project your feelings through a poem, use second person because you’ll never be first in anything, you won’t have to face it yourself |
3/17/2014
Shouldn’t you have figured this out by now? Nestle up against his clavicle and realize His heartbeat isn’t what you need, or even what you want. Press your palm to your chest and breathe in And let him go. You thought it would be different. Learn what makes your body move, Listen to what makes your body bleed. Work your way through this life From the inside out—realize exactly what You’re made of. Bones and vessels and organs. Is it as poetic and as beautiful as you had hoped? Leaves fall every autumn, and flowers bloom Again in the spring. The problem is the in-between. Doctors fake a cough and call in sick, Pilots kiss the tarmac after every final descent. Even nuns curse through their teeth sometimes. You’ll never know, really. You’ll change With the seasons, with the tides; after every Hot shower you’ll be scrubbed new again. You’ll have to figure it out again with Each sway of the clock’s fingers And time will beckon you forward. |
4/07/2014 - written for The Triggering Town class
San Ildefonso The Carter kid drowned in the arroyo last week, and this morning the last of the water left its mouth. They finally found his body amidst the desolation. His mother sat weeping on its banks, but nothing filled. We all admired her efforts. No one feels well anymore. The leaves fall in July, and don’t come back the following spring. In church, people pray for a flood, or just enough to start over. The whisky burns no worse than the wind. The needles sting no worse than the cold. No one came to his funeral. Tumbleweeds and roadrunners raced. Nothing else moved. |
4/13/2014 - written for The Triggering Town class
Twenty-Two Miles from Truth or Consequences Letters are delivered on Tuesdays, packages on Thursdays. The mailman can finish this route in under an hour on the rare times when he is even obligated to begin. People are sick more often than not, complaining of sore throat, coughing, their organs seem heavier than before. The only thing the doctor prescribes is a good night’s sleep. Here, the Earth turns slowly. Well-rested nights are never enough, sleep just crawls into their bones and laughs. The sky is wide, the clouds pass gently. Tumbleweeds and roadrunners race each other, dust follows suit. Welcome to Arrey, Population: 232. Certified Ghost Town-- People don’t like this label much, but they can’t say they disagree. Each year, the population decreases by nine—death accounts for three, high school graduation the remainder. There is only one road leading out, yuccas lining the dirt like directions. Even the river escapes. The green, too, though returning like a lover to arms when the mountains get lonely. Rain drips, making the roads flow muddy. The stars are tourists, sliced by the horizon. Even the moon, stuck in orbit, finds a way to leave every morning. The inhabitants shunned the sky long ago, no one looks up as a form of punishment. Sand gets in their eyes as they walk back to the only home they’ve ever known. Rafters, bones creak in the wind. They’re one gust short of disappearing. |
4/14/2014 - written for The Triggering Town class
Travel Guide for the Edge of the Earth Attractive places render us aware of our inadequacies. So I’m writing this for you. I don’t even know what to say. This is your Travel Guide for the Edge of the Earth, brought to you by the Cold Hard Truth Association. The environment is important. Move gingerly, in doubtful water. Do you think there’s something wrong with you? Glorify the lie-- you are magnificent tonight. It isn’t enough, but it keeps you hungry and safe. Longing for intimacy? Avoid the 888-room Hotel Novosibirsk. Everyone there sleeps alone. Lay in the dark and listen. Hello? Are you there? Why? Resist, but come anyway. You’re almost there. Two right turns, one left, you’re where you started again. Walk in circles until you arrive. One is never lost until one feels lost. Peek over the edge—isn’t it a good idea? Buy postcards, keychains, t-shirts: Someone I know went to the Edge of the Earth and didn’t fall off no matter how hard they tried and all they got me was this stupid t-shirt. It’s all very deadly, yes. It adds to the appeal. Enjoy your stay. |
4/21/2014 - written for The Triggering Town class
Letter to 2007 from 2014 Dear Natalie—look at your palm. It will never be this pure again. Don’t let some boy of zero consequence tell you that you look slutty. The definition probably escapes him, too, but he knew that “slut” is what boys call girls when they wear blue eyeliner to feel pretty. You’re twelve, and stronger than you know. This boy cannot tell you shit. Whoops—don’t tell your mother I said that. Sometimes saying what matters involves brute force. You’ll learn this eventually. Forgive Will anyway. He is just as confused and tormented as you. In six years, he’ll be laughing at your jokes and saying he’ll miss you after graduation. Natalie, boys are gross. They always will be. Write poems about them anyway. Too many-- late at night with a flashlight and rhyme. Rhyme “love” with “glove” and find a way to make sense of it all. I know you don’t think so, but you’re beautiful on your edges and rough in between and this is something to be proud of. Your light is a star reflected, and there are constellations in your body… you’d know this if you didn’t avoid your own reflection. You’re going to be okay, kid. Oh! One more thing. If a boy named Sam calls you ugly, laugh. He will find you beautiful, in time. Love always, Natalie. |
4/28/2014 - written for The Triggering Town class
Strangers sleep in my room
make breakfast in my kitchen
paint the walls green. This is not my home
anymore. Street lamps line the night sky,
a runway in my rearview mirror,
“Run away, take off, take flight.”
This is not my home anymore.
This is where I learned to suffer
better. Cul-de-sacs hanging like
nooses, I ripped this place apart— plucking
fences like weeds and snatching roof shingles,
arranging them into a deck of cards
shuffling and bluffing
my way through the entire game.
This is where I learned to lie.
Neighbor kids spun fantasies
in my yard, invited me out but never in,
doors shut in crescendo and
the rain on my window,
a metronome, fingers tapping,
beckoning but no one answers.
This is where I learned to be alone.
Recently repaved sidewalks cry,
“Look at how we’ve grown, we’re
new. Buildings sprout from the ground
in spring, we’re so much different than you
remember.” I think I loved this town once,
but this isn’t a place I can easily come back to.
Street blocks lined up side-by-side,
jail cells. A labyrinth, find a way out or
settle. This is where I learned to leave.
Strangers sleep in my room
make breakfast in my kitchen
paint the walls green. This is not my home
anymore. Street lamps line the night sky,
a runway in my rearview mirror,
“Run away, take off, take flight.”
This is not my home anymore.
This is where I learned to suffer
better. Cul-de-sacs hanging like
nooses, I ripped this place apart— plucking
fences like weeds and snatching roof shingles,
arranging them into a deck of cards
shuffling and bluffing
my way through the entire game.
This is where I learned to lie.
Neighbor kids spun fantasies
in my yard, invited me out but never in,
doors shut in crescendo and
the rain on my window,
a metronome, fingers tapping,
beckoning but no one answers.
This is where I learned to be alone.
Recently repaved sidewalks cry,
“Look at how we’ve grown, we’re
new. Buildings sprout from the ground
in spring, we’re so much different than you
remember.” I think I loved this town once,
but this isn’t a place I can easily come back to.
Street blocks lined up side-by-side,
jail cells. A labyrinth, find a way out or
settle. This is where I learned to leave.
Sophomore Year
2/17/2015
Without a Cloak, Without a Chariot
When I was a child, my mother told me
that death would eventually come to claim us.
She paused, and I could hear my brother outside,
shouting and tackling the neighbor boys. I could hear
my father pounding away with his tools in the garage.
My mother put one hand cautiously on her mouth,
like she was made entirely of glass, and continued:
Someday, she and I, and others like us,
would be escorted to the hereafter by death’s touch.
I had nightmares for weeks—a hooded figure
seizing me by the throat, hands scorching my skin,
I would wake up in a pool of sweat, my mother
pressing a cold washcloth to my forehead, whispering
“Eventually everything is going to be alright.”
What my mother didn’t tell me, couldn’t tell me,
was that death would come for me early.
Death came dressed in dark wash jeans
and a black hoodie zipped halfway up.
Death came with a crooked smile, pointy nose,
and hair like crows taking flight at dusk.
Death came for me as a nineteen-year-old boy.
When his lips met mine for the first time,
I nearly turned into ash. I felt the space underneath
my skin begin to simmer from his hands
resting on my waist, wrapped around my neck.
A fire set ablaze in my ribcage, I thought he had
sparked something pure deep inside of me. A rebirth,
rising from the ruins of my scared adolescence,
always terrified of another’s touch. I would realize
soon enough that every time I took his hand in mine,
the singed soot that fell from my skin was not
evidence of my renewal, but of my destruction.
Long after he left, I finally understood:
none of this was ever my fault. My mother
was only trying to warn me, prepare me,
make the grief of losing oneself a little lighter.
I wanted to be loved, to be touched, but I never
had a death wish, I never wanted to be killed,
to be burned from the inside out.
Without a Cloak, Without a Chariot
When I was a child, my mother told me
that death would eventually come to claim us.
She paused, and I could hear my brother outside,
shouting and tackling the neighbor boys. I could hear
my father pounding away with his tools in the garage.
My mother put one hand cautiously on her mouth,
like she was made entirely of glass, and continued:
Someday, she and I, and others like us,
would be escorted to the hereafter by death’s touch.
I had nightmares for weeks—a hooded figure
seizing me by the throat, hands scorching my skin,
I would wake up in a pool of sweat, my mother
pressing a cold washcloth to my forehead, whispering
“Eventually everything is going to be alright.”
What my mother didn’t tell me, couldn’t tell me,
was that death would come for me early.
Death came dressed in dark wash jeans
and a black hoodie zipped halfway up.
Death came with a crooked smile, pointy nose,
and hair like crows taking flight at dusk.
Death came for me as a nineteen-year-old boy.
When his lips met mine for the first time,
I nearly turned into ash. I felt the space underneath
my skin begin to simmer from his hands
resting on my waist, wrapped around my neck.
A fire set ablaze in my ribcage, I thought he had
sparked something pure deep inside of me. A rebirth,
rising from the ruins of my scared adolescence,
always terrified of another’s touch. I would realize
soon enough that every time I took his hand in mine,
the singed soot that fell from my skin was not
evidence of my renewal, but of my destruction.
Long after he left, I finally understood:
none of this was ever my fault. My mother
was only trying to warn me, prepare me,
make the grief of losing oneself a little lighter.
I wanted to be loved, to be touched, but I never
had a death wish, I never wanted to be killed,
to be burned from the inside out.
Junior Year
9/28/2015
Tell me about obsession. I want to know about those shackles, yes, the ones you made yourself. The ones you wrapped around your ribs. Tell me about addiction. I can see your mouth open each time the tremble in your chest returns. Knee-jerk, a reflex created in self-preservation. Tell me about fixation. You stare. You stare and your eyes go right through me. I say what and you say nothing. I say what and you laugh. Tell me about passion. Everything you say weighs far too much. Sometimes this world begs for destruction. I think, sometimes, you do too. |
10/25/2015
you: a peach cut in half, brought to lips, slips on a trail of its own juice. you fall down into the dirt picked up and licked off tasting just as sweet, you-- |
11/12/2015
How can we learn to let go? Each night I take a rag to the inside of my ribcage and my heart twists, wringing itself out, clenching until clean. I wake to find my blood muddied again. Thoughts of you (of course, of you) come in like the tide, and I surrender to fixation: that compulsory, unwavering gaze, that slow consumption. This rag is getting too heavy. My veins are filled with too much water. Tell me, what does it feel like to have a heart that expands? To be rid of all this dirt? I want to know that loosened fist of letting go. |
12/07/2015
Timeline of the Far Future Neptune has fourteen moons and is lonely. I saw her in late August of last year, a small disk pulling me through the aperture of my telescope. Gently swaying among the stars, she told me that in three billion years, her largest moon will be torn apart as he nears too close to her surface. She looks sad. I tell her three billion years is so, so far away and lamenting this loss can wait. She turns away, the temptation of her ice skin disappearing from view. I can still hear her in the wind, explaining that the problem with all definitive events is that waiting only cuts our atmospheres deeper, and knowing the future means nothing for acceptance. My mouth tastes of methane. Her grief becomes my own. Neptune has thirteen moons and still remains blue. |
4/29/2016
These trees with their knots & these leaves with their veins & this breeze making a gentle hum of it all. My heart is mirrored in this flora. The wind grows stronger & I grow tighter, a cemetery of branches forming at my feet & I think, I do not want to be in love anymore. 5/13/2016 Timeline of the Far Future, Revisited Neptune has fourteen moons and is lonely. Her blue runs deep, her sadness piercing the narrowing aperture of my telescope. One of her moons, Triton, is moving closer and closer to Neptune’s surface. His orbit is decaying due to her gravitational pull and one day, she will consume him. Triton will be nothing but shards of rock and metal, circling Neptune in a ring of her own making. She is ashamed. My mouth tastes of methane. I know that compulsory pull, that slow consumption. What brings lovers together is also what breaks them. In love: there is the destroyer, and the destroyed, and there is nothing to do but succumb. Neptune waits. She waits, and I avert my gaze from the temptation of her icy skin. Neptune has thirteen moons and remains forlorn. |
5/24/2016
∆S as Explained to Me by a Bird i. I sit on my porch and ask the bird how it feels to fly in the rain. How the drops feel on her wings, solitary in the sky. And she responds to me. She responds-- ii. To me, nature favors the most probable state. What those scientists said was true: disorder is inevitable. When left alone, I disintegrate. The rain does not help. Tell me you’re not afraid of the same. iii. Tell me, what does a bird know of entropy? Then again, what do I know of flight? I consider fighting. I know I am far more stable when I’m left alone. The bird knows this is not true. The dark chasm of her eyes tells me I cannot fight the fundamental flow of the universe. Thermodynamic equilibrium always requires another. I falter. I say nothing. She shakes the water off her wings and she flies away. iv. I fly away. She empties. Energy is conserved. |
Summer Sixteen
08/08/2016
Rind
I lie in the river, belly up and hungry.
From the shore I am a shark,
prowling the fast-moving water.
I think I am here to forget you.
Cold water numbs my blood,
yet I can still feel your fingers tap
tapping my chest in time with my heart.
I hold my breath. I dive.
The rag of my skin refuses
to be wrung out in this river.
I cannot be cleansed of you,
your smell in the nape of my neck.
Waves break around me as I rise.
Water crawls past my lips,
and I can almost taste you again.
Finally, gratefully, I feel full.
I am cursed with this body,
this wretched cavern, that wants you.
This heart, beating still underwater,
that needs you.
Rind
I lie in the river, belly up and hungry.
From the shore I am a shark,
prowling the fast-moving water.
I think I am here to forget you.
Cold water numbs my blood,
yet I can still feel your fingers tap
tapping my chest in time with my heart.
I hold my breath. I dive.
The rag of my skin refuses
to be wrung out in this river.
I cannot be cleansed of you,
your smell in the nape of my neck.
Waves break around me as I rise.
Water crawls past my lips,
and I can almost taste you again.
Finally, gratefully, I feel full.
I am cursed with this body,
this wretched cavern, that wants you.
This heart, beating still underwater,
that needs you.