LitFest Setlist - poems from "remains of the flood"
I just had my first in-person poetry reading at LitFest in June! I've just finished my year-long poetry fellowship with the Poetry Collective at Lighthouse Writer's Workshop and I shared some of my favorite poems from the current draft. Watch/listen to my reading here
my nostalgia sits in small jars/ the years they fill the wax 'round my life's wick/ each candle/ an era/ small blazes/thirst/ line countertops/ the windowsills/ flames stretch and fade/ closer yet to curtains/ kitchen towels/ someday the wax will burn low/ jars in heat will fragment/ and the fire will burn/ unconstrained/ unrelenting/ remorseless
If your teenager is blogging about A, B, or C, they might have a #teachercrush
The alphabet was the simplest code
easy to hide
covet
a letter all your own
as a teenage girl
is more than you usually get from the world
and here you have a whole man
with the whole world in his eyes
and his breath on your neck
and his hand in yours
because you're the quiet girl
the teacher's pet
and that's how it always is
when you're mature for your age
permanent hall passes for lunches
spent talking about books
you’ll assign to your book club
to blur the source
but it’s 2012
and Aria and Ezra are still on TV
and he’s too young
to have a girl this young
as his confidant
and you see the careful footing
the doors pressed open with a doorstop
the conversations grow shorter
colder
and you’re left
with fragments
diary entries
to stay sane
to know that the memory
was real
Aftertaste
It fell as rain
and I
open-mouthed and tongue spread wide
felt it cut through me
stiff and bitter
A warm burst like freshly planted seeds
a sweetness bursting on my lips
filling me with lilac cream
I let the jasmine kiss absorb
into my marrow
my brain stem
and sockets
until I was blanketed
in its floral haze
–
Back then
you could cut me apart
sever each muscle
lay out the strings
and I
would have looked as spun sugar
disappearing beneath your hot damp
breath
nonlinear
I have been writing my time
as an unreliable diarist
carving the possibilities
into chapters
days without dates
whole years imagined
while I hide the past
on pages folded
diagonally
so that I will not catch a glimpse
that will send me spiraling
I write to tell myself
what is real
when the brain fog thickens
and the night sweats intensify
the dreams vivid
draining my reserves
already dangerously low
I write in pen
so that I cannot erase
what has happened
but I can skip whole sections
and choose a better arc
reread and rewrite
until its a new story
so far from that hand
I will convince myself
I can no longer decipher
There are just some things you don’t want to relive
There are whole years of my life I stumbled upon by accident–
a teddy bear
A flashback of a police station
clutching a small bear in the middle of the night
My mom is talking to someone in another room
Two police officers are telling me an elaborate story about the bear
They are fighting over which of them the bear is named after
I’m laughing
tired
in my pajamas.
I remember other nights
sitting in the back seat of my mom’s car
it’s cold
the back windshield is frosted over
it’s an empty HEB parking lot
My mom is talking to an officer again and I know she’s worried
Every time
I think it’s the last time.
Every time
things get quiet
return to a state of ease
until my mom’s crying again
and I have to put on my brave face
and add another small bear to my shelf
Seasonal Affective Disorder
we like to pretend that the art of forgetting is passive
progressively ceasing to call back the past
is just the way time passes
you have new memories
to obscure the old
but you have to live differently each day
hold your shoulders back and taste the first day of fall
the hot breeze
and step forward
thinking of the upcoming deadline
what to defrost for dinner
and not how ten years ago today
you first saw his hair
slicked back and flipped up at the back of his neck
his mismatched watch with the gold face and black band
and thought of him so temporary
as the weather
forgetting that the wind is moving
and the seasons return
just when you get used to
the unrelenting sun
you cannot push away the past
you can only dress for it
pull your gloves on
don a light sweater
and layer
through the winter
It’s funny how things like love can gather
like skin in corners— splendid dust of things
aged out supposedly replaced by health
I do not sweep the corners or the sills or the things that wrap
‘round bedposts I do not know where I would find them again
If they were no longer seen out of the corner of my eye
The trips I would have to make to impound lots and storage sheds—
the forgotten things and the love they were coated in— their final seal, unbroken
the gabapentin sleep
crawling out of a long hibernation in the belly of the storm/ the quake deafening/
the deep/ my eyes mistake my light for the void/ sight had become null/ like the ringing in my ears/
I only have touch/ the damp of the cave coating in salt and pruning/ until I become ribbon candy/
sinking in abysmal sea/ when the siren ceased to call/ the overwhelm of being born in full color/
saturated in the loss of a heartbeat/ falling out and seeking another/ to flow through
bloated little pod
I’m sinking now
Into the waves of dizziness
I have to bite the walls
And chew
Taste up from down
Because my eyes are glued shut
I’m afraid of your sheen
Touch gloss and slide backward
I can only taste what feeds me
What you choose to drop
Like flakes to a fish
I breathe in darkness
Let it melt on my tongue
As I paddle upward
Flailing only puts me in a tailspin
Gliding soft and smooth
Failing
Porcelain cracking
Red pouring into the pink
