βThere is an ancestral hum / of suffering we cannot escape, / cannot speak to, / cannot pull from the maggots of time. / Its name is the silence; there is no language for it. We are not the shore, / we are the tide.β
β Lisa Marie Basile, fromΒ βI Put the Coffin Out to Seaβ
I am blood and blood and replay. I am please don't go.
-Lisa Marie Basile (I Put The Coffin Out To Sea)
Β Sneak peak under the cut (311 words)
βHave you spoken to Chrissy recently?β She asked, her head tilting in a faux display of innocent interest.
Your jaw clenched as your anger bubbled under your skin. βNo,β you said curtly.Β
βWell she told meΒ allΒ about Steve. God is heΒ handsome!β She gushed and you wondered if Anita would still come to class if you punched her granddaughter right then. βI mean I donβt think Iβve ever seen two people more in love and the fact theyβre not even soulmates? Itβs adorable!β
Your chest caved, crushing your heart and lungs beneath the rubble of your bones and flesh. The air felt too thick to breathe and your anger seemed to burn at your skinΒ beggingΒ you to release it.
βI personally canβt imagine spending the rest of my life with anyone other than my soulmate, but I think they could go all the way!β She wouldnβt stop talking.Β She needed to stop talking.Β You wanted to tell her to shut up, to grow up. You wanted to tell her that she was nothing but a mean girl who peaked in high school and now could only get her rocks off through petty gossip and mean jibes but you didnβt say any of that.
It was like she pulled you right back into that bar to force you to watch it happen all over again with your feet numb and glued to the floor.
βAreΒ youΒ seeing anyone?β Her smile turned to a smirk then revealing the Carol you knew. Cruelty was her first language after all.
βFuck you,β you sneered at her. Your shoulder bumped against hers as you walked past her, finally feeling your feet again as your legs moved faster than you could think. You found yourself in the bathroom, ducking into one of the stalls where you tried to breathe despite the rubble constricting your lungs.
i haven't done a "these are my top poems" in a long while but i haven't been reading a lot of contemporary poetry? so in no particular order, some poems ive been thinking about:
i put the coffin out to sea (lisa marie basile): this one is always sort of perpetually on my list. the way the language on the page gives itself to the image of the ocean is masterfully done... the words eb and flow beautifully. such a haunting and poignant description of grief
half-beautiful optic nerve (amy jannotti): "perhaps i will write
dread so many times, it will lose / all meaning. perhaps i will float" ... this is a poem informing my wantingness right now that is beautifully written
but gravity still exists (jacquelyn bengfort): this one is a masterclass in a brief and beautiful hope. the final line sticks in my mouth like peanut butter and pervades on even my lowest days
bow before this body : kneel at this spine of fire : disease of divinity : unmoving, incurable : fuchsia blood : made of incessant summer : on fire forever : ligament of corrupt ivy : so tight, nearly erotic : this shell varnished in rage : vertebrae beloved : this sea so tired of containing : yet uncontained by shore : clawing toward morning : in me a sense of the perpetual : body tired, bodyβ¦
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