I don’t mean to be contrary when I say this, but I wasn’t too impressed by the December issue of Poetry. This is, however, not to say that it was not a good issue or that there were not moments of connection. (Sam Sax is always a moment.) Yet that was my problem, those moments not connecting to the next and then to the next like this moment that connects to the moment where I say
when it comes to the issue of poetry, the issue of poetry is that too much of it won’t fit inside me
or
no one wants to hear me complain about my weight
as a size 0 (whatever that means today), but that’s the pathology isn’t it? the whole point where something that once seemed large now seems small which then makes you seem (to yourself) large.
what I mean to say is that there was a lot of disconnect between myself and all that poetry and it is really only because of myself and likely someone else felt so very differently and still feels
i ask a lot of questions. i miss a lot of people, things, places (can’t go back to most)
i realize that I always begin to type with good intention--grammar, structure. it all falls to the ground though (within minutes).
i was laid off from my job today. budget cuts. no choice. we hate to do this. we will call you first if anything opens back up. last one in,
first one out.
new company and everything, big changes are coming.
i heard about a lot of people crying. my boss. co/workers. i heard about a lot of feelings other than mine.
there’s a lot we can’t control. i know this.
like my lover’s ear eroding. like the lump in his left ball. like the cyst on my back that seemed to appear so suddenly and then emptied itself like a gun.
one bullet left behind.
but see a lot of people love me. so i went home and walked the dog. we sat on a park bench. i smoked a cigarette and we walked back. i cleaned the kitchen in the home i own outright. before all this, my brother poured me coffee. after i cleaned, he made us lunch. when my mother came home, she came home with a four foot stuffed unicorn and shrimp. a friend planned a “cheer-up” day for tomorrow. i read poetry in the bath and even though i didn’t
connect
it gave me this. and this is more thought than I’ve had in a little while.
in college, i’m learning about genetics. in college, i’m getting the honor society invitations now. in college, i’m docked for comma splices that aren’t comma splices--more personal preferences--so i keep sticking my commas where she’d like a semicolon. in college, that same professor tells me she hopes i’m headed for graduate studies and writes “perfection” on some papers i write. in college, i’m pushed to study abroad and i think about it. in college, i’m expected to do better than i can sometimes.
sometimes, at 26 years old, i facebook stalk people younger than me and i judge their life choices.
mine weren’t any better until now and now i still struggle sometimes.
but that isn’t the point really, none of this is except for the parts about poetry or the part that is to come in the next moment where jim harrison in new world comes alive in my mind and there’s a little old man in the middle of a big field and my punctuation doesn’t matter because he’s just fallen while looking up at some birds and he says to his dogs licking his face that this is a world where falling is best
where he begins the whole thing by writing, “this moment says no to the next”
and maybe that’s the issue I have with the December issue of Poetry
all those moments saying no to the next and my discomfort with every mouth not gaped in a “yes”
the idea of any moment not leading me to another
a new door not opening and all those endings so abrupt and i being useless and shaken and stung in a bath that burns my skin red
