Traverse the Moon.

Poet, writer, artist, soul, moon-gazer.                                         

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If anyone’s interested in seeing my NaPoWriMo poetry, I’m putting it here:

https://rookpoetry.wordpress.com/napowrimo-2023/

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Checking in!

I’ve been hard at work with poetry! I graduated with an undergraduate degree in English and minors in Creative writing and Professional writing and now I’m applying to MFA programs!

One cool project I want you guys to know about is the art and poetry zine I helped create! It’s all focused on chickens! It’s called COOP: chickens of our poetry, and you can find it by googling that or by checking out the tumblr I made for it: @coopzine

I’ve also been making cool zines and getting my work published in lots of really cool magazines! I had no idea when I was active on this blog just how far I’d be going with poetry. It’s so cool :)

Hope anyone who sees this post is having a good day, even if you don’t remember me from nearly a decade ago <3

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perhaps the greatest haiku I've ever written:

Dino nuggets trace to the source the way my flesh forms my ancestors. And a slightly longer version that's a little less opaque:

Dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets trace their ancestry to the source the way my flesh forms the body of my ancestors. Tomato DNA lives on in ketchup the way my blood holds mine.

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I was having a bit of a poetry nostalgia trip. I wonder if any of my followers are still around to see this post.

If you’re interested, I actually got something published, and a couple of my poems won a contest, so that’s exciting news :) 

Still working at it all though. I hope anyone who happens to see this is doing lovely as well. Even if you’ve totally forgotten who I am. <3

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I’m sorry that I just disappear a lot

I have been writing poetry every day, but people keep reminding me that once I post something to tumblr, I lose any publication rights to it. Not that anything I write is actually publishable, but just in case, you know?

I originally just wanted a place where I could put ALL of my poetry, good or bad into one place, and maybe get feedback or find some people who like what I do.

But I don’t know if that’s worth giving up future publishing rights. And I haven’t made any friends here really, so what’s the point of staying?

Hope that anyone who reads this has a great life.

Maybe I’ll see you again.

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falling off the grid doesn't hurt promise

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2-7-17

deport and deplosion // rapport and rat-portion

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You know your way around tone. You know exactly what phrases to use to hurt people in just the right way that they feel bad about feeling hurt. It’s like inflicting two pains and being exempt from both. Your fiery darts lodge in the soft underbellies in a way that looks like an accident-- their fault for walking over them, their fault for not having thick skin. But I know your games. I see you setting the traps, composing salty emails you might never send, but the thoughts are still there... floating in the atmosphere. Waiting for someone to inhale the noxious fumes. So I’ll watch my belly and hold my breath whenever you pass by...

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I hate my handwriting, it really is a mess but I know how to write, so I guess that I am blessed but still it doesn’t help if no one knows how to decipher all these words that I am writing just because “I am a writer”

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a rumble of feet over the hollow floor, a rumble of feet where there were no feet before.

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2-6-17

The sky looks like a fishbone back, the spines of the ribs extending across the sky, and you look up at the trees, edges defined, and say the ends of the branches are fishbones as well. You with your fishbone hair pick one off of the ground and call it a wishbone, but when we pull it, we both lose.

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2-5-17

You trail your toes in the water, but I’ve always hated my feet.

It’s warm, but I can feel the wind blow through the holes in my sweater.

It smells like horse poop which you might think is bad, but the smell is comforting.

The roots burst through the ground, upsetting cobblestones. No one realized their potential.

[traversethemoon]

2-4-17

You slept like the wind last night. Tossing, turning... howling... Did you rush through trees, rattling their branches in your dream? Did you set wind-vanes spinning? Or did you play with a blade of grass for hours on end?

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2-3-17 (pt. 3)

Staying up late, waking up late, with your eyes that feel as if they’re glued together with cement. Voice cracks that make some girls desirable, but just make me sound like I slept at the bottom of a lake, algae growing up my neck, through my throat. Try blinking with silver dollars holding down your eyelids. It’s not easy. But then again, is anything?

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2-3-17 (pt. 2)

Your tongue is birdsong, your eyes are summer breeze, you are everything lovely. 

And is it true you write love poems to yourself because no one else will? 

Well, at least you love yourself. That’s something going for you. It takes guts these days, to accept yourself how you are. 

You ever look in a mirror? They’re cold things. Nothing like a shadow from a fire or the reflective pupils of someone who loves you.

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2-3-17

She’s breaking apart the sky to give to you in pieces like chipped toffee, for you to hold in your mouth and savor the sweetness of it all! Those stars!

Look! Now she’s holding Gemini, releasing a sigh, look to the sky and say goodbye.

All these constellations are so heavy,  but you laugh so light, and I guess that makes it feel like enough.

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2-2-17

Sitting in the basement of the science center, a room you’d never realize was there unless you were shown. At a “study group” where we mostly focus on the study of laughter. Smiles all around. And maybe a hush will fall and maybe words will be written, but mostly we’re reading the same paragraph over and over because we keep getting distracted and starting over. Snapping of gum and popping of knuckles, waiting at the corner for a friend to come back, but doubling over when it turns out to be a stranger. Arguing lightly over whether there’s a particle accelerator hidden somewhere down these halls, a well-kept secret. And all the signs in the hallway flash green, saying, “warning: laser on”

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2-1-17

In the laundromat, no one’s around. It’s 2AM and I’m slightly paranoid. Lugging armfuls of wet clothing across the room to the dryers that just tumble your clothes around for two hours, but they’re still wet when you take them out. I’m dripping a trail of socks behind me. Sleeping on the couch where a million butts have sat before, waiting for the dryer to finish. Falling asleep, drool pooling on the pilled, green fabric.

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Portrait of a weeknight out in the mall (1-31-17)

Wandering through and flipping through magazines, hoping the clerks don’t throw us out, as we’re taking pictures of the ads. We wander through haunting grounds-- the poetry section-- only two shelves wide. But luckily, we don’t see any ghosts.

We’re in a mall, and we gaze open-mouthed -- like fishes -- at the arching ceilings close enough to graze our heads on. The smell of old knowledge wafts around in the used bookshop. So many books, all so nostalgic. But all the poems are musty and old, none modern. We traipse out. Riding down an escalator, we see the Chinese gift shop. 

And why the heck not? Entering the cave of Buddha statues and lucky cats, we feel out of place. Searching around for anything in the price range of one dollar. Seems like we’re buying some chopsticks. I get sixty-two cents back in change. 

The coins jingle in my hand as we leave the shop, and I mosey over to a jewelry kiosk where they try to sell you overpriced, low-quality diamonds, and convince you to get holes punched in your ears at the Claire’s over there. I ask the gangling teenager manning the kiosk (he’s looking blankly at nothing, so I have to try for his attention twice) what I can buy for sixty-two cents. He thinks for a minute, before pulling out two earring-backs. I buy them for fifty cents, and I give you the pennies, and we throw all twelve cents left over into the fountain for charity.

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1-30-17

Just last week I went to the book store. There was a man there. He stood, unassuming as I spoke to my mother on the phone. He was standing next to the shelves of poetry.

As he flipped through a book of poetry, turning a page or two, I stopped pacing, and joined his standing there. I said “goodbye” and hung up the phone. For a moment, neither of us spoke.

And then he did. He turned to me and spoke, asking me, “do you write poetry?” I said I did, while nervous, I clutched my phone. His face lit up and he said, “me too!” I explained what I was doing there among the poetry books that day, just standing.

And as we talked a while, standing, he asked if he could read a poem. “Sure,” I spoke (for we’d agreed that modern poets fill their books with mindless poetry), so he recited one (it was a love poem, too!), and I didn’t even have the urge to check my phone.

[UNFINISHED SESTINA, SORRY]

(but all of this is true! I’m surprised how non-deviated from the real life event it is despite being such a structured format.)