There are few things in this world that bring me such simple joy as poetry and clothing, and both are not quite so far from one another. Both of these things revert my mind and soul to childhood, a cavern of paper dolls and vinyl dolls and more books than I can count. Youth, for me at least, was exploring inward through introspection before I knew what introspection was; I shaped worlds of my own when I became dissatisfied with those that surrounded me. Inventing imaginative realities is one of the truest talents of children, and as many writers before, around, and after me, I believe this to be one of the truest tellings of a talented adult as well.
Poetry is was not my chosen method of harnessing creativity prior to my enrollment in the course I created this chapbook for. I considered myself a stronger creative nonfiction writer or journalist than poet, too far removed from the blissful glee of the process of poetry I found when I was younger. I was too detached, clinical, with no route to access the most visceral emotions necessary for poetry. How quickly I had forgotten the idea of writing without pretense, and allowing what needs to be written to be written, as someone wise I am learning from often advises. By approaching some of the first exercises and prompts in this course, I was able to relearn various concepts of the building blocks of poetry, and reconstruct my own style and unlock vulnerability once more. I let go of perfectionism, of perfect diction, of scale and stanza spacing and returned to the sandbox of my brain to excavate and mold some of the poems that direly needed to be written. I wrestled for a bit, but produced a fresh mindset and willingness to go to uncomfortable places for the sake of the fact that I could.
Some of my most important poems I have written in my lifetime include those written in the course, for the fact that I wrote them with courage. I did not deck “Magnolia” out in festive trim and generous portions of selective memories from an autobiographical narrative, but rather literally uprooted the wounding influences of white supremacy on my childhood. I did not don “kid gloves”, pun fully intended, to face generational silencing and the weight of historical grief in “Gloves Required”. I channeled the exhaustion, rage, frustration and solemn reflections that remained from the last semester of existing in predominantly white academic environments into words without censoring or suppressing myself, something I don’t think I have ever done in my life. These releases reminded me that poetry does not exist to sit there and look pretty or agreeable. It exists, at least for myself, as evidence of what is burning in me and where.
Back to clothing. Throughout this course, I chose what to write as I would choose an outfit. Typically this begins with a statement centerpiece, or an article of clothing I have simply been dying to wear for a considerable amount of time. One could consider this centerpiece the central topic of one of my poems, or the opening line, whichever comes first. From there I lay the framework for where I feel the outfit should go: the occasion, the tone, the details of accessories, shoes and hairstyling. These elements fall in line with the centerpiece, and adorn it in complementary fashion. Similarly, the amount of stanzas or lines for the poem, diction and perspective of the language in the piece, and punctuation follow the opening lines rather quickly. If I am feeling particularly focused, I finish writing the bodily content of an average piece in around 20 minutes, making small edits and revisions as I go. This includes comprehensive time padding for the occasion that a stray verb (piece of hair) or oddly phrased line (wrinkled sleeve) should present themselves. After completing this assembly, my final step is to back away and survey the total picture. I read the poem all the way through, examine the outfit head to toe. Only then can I make the final touches and send my creation on its way into the world as I know it.
It is hard to say what I want my poems to say, because they are held so closely to me. Much of my work is autobiographical, and some is not. Much of it is comprised of stories I have only recently begun to tell, to myself in comfort or others in confidence. Some contains my deepest, most visceral feelings that cannot be voiced elsewhere, but I write for the sake of writing anyway. Some of my favorite work of mine is simply a blissful place I take myself in moments of turbulence, a gem I’d like to immortalize on the page today. All in all, my work feels like me. Wordy vocabulary, meditative lists, run-on sentences, generational wounds carved by antiblackness and all.
When preparing this chapbook specifically, I wanted whoever read it to know me a bit better. To read from me is to learn from me, and after years of silence and fumbling and low whispers to myself in the dark, telling myself the next time is the one for me, I took myself seriously and wrote lessons from Leah. Poetry often takes a form of confessional vulnerability, to say what cannot be said. My prayer is that what I do say can be heard and received.
For all the black poetesses + For Tammy, Dolores, Teresa. I hope you know why.
Gloves Required
Silence is a stifling summer in 1812
Hands on cracked knees heaving
Nothing but her own ragged breath for company,
jackhammer heart
Broad feet set to running
Thick soles thwack against the sodden soil
Miles and miles and
400 years and
Nowhere to go
And tarnished spine meets her groom once more
Heel to married steel, as it always goes
After the inevitable is over, she finds
A whisper of tenderness
A cup of a salve
A hymn, a verse, a heart
Yet it is impossible to soothe a soul in chains that is still running
Bolting, tearing away
That very soil I pick out from between my toes
Beneath the roses
The garden has had a very hard summer, they dissent
I agree and kneel among them
May the next one teach me how to tear my gloves off and run
GNO
I have seen so many other tears than my own
I sputter, I rust
I rot
Painted over with that chiming chrome shine
Nothing good ever came out of a bar bathroom
So my four brick walls are sealed
Pulled taut
Guarding the secrets of sisters and mothers forevermore
What rhythm, what music, what chatter!
We dance
We clutter
We preen
We mourn
Sticky sweet and glittering and toppling, a domino pile
You zip me, I’ll yours
Summer Vacation
She decides she needs a break
She decides she will retreat to the seaside, or maybe just
The land of distant condos and crab shacks
She decides she will stretch in the sun and listen to music
loud enough to unnerve the neighbors
Her free mornings will drive her to the consignment stores
Here she will pluck and preen over the slim pickings
of southern women
For once, they beat city slicker leftovers
She decides she will don her brand new ages old nightgown
or sundress or something
and she will sit by the neighborhood park
She thinks she will try and write the whole Atlantic
as she watches it thrash by
How can she see that and not shrink?
How can she see that and not think I am so small and not small enough at all?
Autumn’s Eve
She cherishes the turquoise knit shawl, never takes it off.
A talisman of comfort, she wrings and wraps and brings
it everywhere she goes.
Errands become ritual become adventures, when
All the world’s a stage to an 8 year old.
All the records to break, tempers to pace at breakneck speed, watching and waiting.
September comes while she
counts on her fingers like waiting for packages,
Falling back and back again into familiar rhythms
The joys of learning never cease.
There, on that blue stool in the basement
She discovers the innumerable wonders of the world
Magnolia
It is 2015 and I am a Junior Docent
This is important
This is a sunny field trip, legions of us marching on
I am given a script, a bonnet, a linen costume
This is important
The slip of paper I am given tells me to parrot something much like this:
“This Southern Magnolia has sheltered countless patrons and visitors in its lifetime
This tree fathered countless others, such as one at the White House
[In 2015 I did not know they would soon cut that one down]
This 100 year legacy and the roots that embrace it stand as
one of the most prominent reminders of
the persistence of nature [Good nature, Southern nature]
on the Hermitage Museum Grounds
With many thanks to
Andrew Jackson himself”
It is 2021 and it is night and I take to those roots with as much rage as I like
I break shovels, jam a forklift into their trunk
I drag them through the halls of the big house
I smash the dirt into their bedspreads, stomp it into the carpets
Scrape my nails down their wallpaper in heaps and spooling ribbons, so many threads
Shredded like skin
I pick the leaves off of my muslin, see the curtain I missed
Cut from the same cloth
As my palm calluses heal and the soles of my feet ache, I wonder for the gardener
How many years has he tended to this rotting relic
How many heads looking up at it, rolling under it
How many faces smiling under their bonnets
How many of them brown
How many of them weeping
He salutes me as I walk back to the parking lot
Just one, I think
Two Glasses
Two long hours languidly stretch
their legs over the sticky wooden table, cracks running down its spine
the two sticky wooden benches making us numb
You participate, I commiserate
It is a generational feast, an indulgent spread
cheeks full of the sounds of us,
For two
When you are done telling your story, I get up
The jowls of the bar bathroom swallow me in
a thin gulp
I steady myself with
cold water, squeaky faucet, warm hands
I wonder if I got those from you too
I wonder if many years ago on this street, aching from its own leaden weight
A woman was wondering all the same
What old haunts and hives housed the hurt she felt
What roads breached and paths rather not traveled she coursed
The unknowable battle she lost
I beg the question, what is in a rock of a name
1,699 miles and a decrepit flower nursery, apparently
The gnashing jaws of history that spit in a napkin, a broad brown forehead, evidently
She wishes for bitter comfort, a rocking chair, a routine of silent notoriety
She mists her plants, and prunes them often
Not even their children she will keep
The greenhouse windows weep in response
February
I sit in my favorite houndstooth armchair
By the window and I think about
how it snows
Light and swift in copious flurries, so quicksilver I think
I would drown if I went outside
I sit in my armchair and I wait
for good news
for an email
for a text
I am hanging, swinging to and fro
In the limbo of my favorite month
And it feels as familiarly lonely as I remember the last one
I break in my new haircut and I call my friends
The restlessness doesn’t feel like silver flurries anymore
Whirling around my shins and ankles
Flying between my toes and in the soles of my boots
I just go on walks when I can, I blink
And the day is gone
I sit in my armchair and I let it pass
This poem is one of many in this collection with pulpy potential, a piece that is not yet completed. I haven’t reached my fullest satisfaction with this poem because I feel it is not yet fully surrendered to the emotions I wish to portray within it. The winter often conjures strong emotions such as isolation, listlessness and idle anxiety, each of which present themselves in this poem. It still has a bit further to go in terms of fully unlocking those emotions and bringing them to the page.
Butterfly Effect
It is here and now that I understand the butterfly effect
Immersed in the tail end of the brunt of its wings
Dust settling, eyes up
Sun is spearing my face as I spin
Sparkling toes treading in that jeweled deep
There are no creatures here to spite me or swallow me
and I am not afraid most of the time
I am only fear when I watch that gavel fall
A drop
A nail, a book
A stone, a bird
They kiss and they sink
Shivering the sweet, low sea all the way across
This poem is one of many in this collection with pulpy potential, a piece that is not yet completed. I haven’t reached my fullest satisfaction with this poem because the imagery is not quite where it needs to be yet. I began this poem with strong intentions of visualization and images I wanted to bring to life, some of which I achieved to my best effort. I still think this poem lacks the clarity in image I desire, and I will continue to revise it by adding at least two more scenes of image to the piece, and shaping a more cohesive narrative to tie them together.
Paperweight
It is awfully difficult to twist a spinal cord into knots
It takes gut work
I reach in and grab it with my bravest hands
Ignore the sharpness, the
Pricking that mixes my blood with hers
She is no longer my voice
With a swell and a puff, a stretch
She is over and out
I untangle her over like my favorite sweater, not a knot unpicked
The threads wiggle and wave in the breeze
I wave back
This poem is one of many in this collection with pulpy potential, a piece that is not yet completed. I haven’t reached my fullest satisfaction with this poem because though I enjoy its concise form, I am interested to see how expansion and longer lines would benefit the piece. I will continue to explore this in further revision attempts, and consider what more this poem has to offer in a different shape or size.
Love (so she stands)
Love, the proud peacock
She shakes her gaudy feathers at me in disdain
her plumes release candy-sweet laughs
at my meek requests
for what have I to offer but dwindling fantasies and childish hope?
and so she stands over me
encased in a glossy fever dream, so faint that she stands on the border of my sanity and my subconscious, draped in dopamine
clothed in constant denial
and as I cower in fear (and a holy one at that) she governs the graspings of good nature
us lowly earthly creatures are crushed by her heel as
Love bands with her brothers
Death and Tragedy; they are preparing for one game
The game that blind followers such as we few will never win
This poem is one of many in this collection with pulpy potential, a piece that is not yet completed. I haven’t reached my fullest satisfaction with this poem because I began drafting it long ago, and feel distanced from the original intentions of the piece. I need to either refocus my approach to this poem or lean into its original soul. I do enjoy the metaphors I’ve constructed here, but feel that it needs more time or a fresh perspective.
Wood Weather
I can’t help but notice that here you smell like sun
SPF grease stretching over our skin
Slick tangled laughing bold faced
Folding into the rays
The air is easy
There is no scratching of that marrow in the hollow of your throat
There are no frigid clips of breath escaping, grinding through your teeth halting
Not here
Here there are gulls, hundreds of them
They swoop, they steal
Yet we have the luxury of paying them no mind
We have time
When the day ends it is hushed, relieved
Sun smell lingers on sandy toes, weaving itself in the carpets
It won’t go away soon, and neither will we
Further excerpts from my chapbook as I submitted it for this course included journal pages, a blurb from a peer reviewer, and blackout revisions of the poems of others, but I’ve chosen not to share those right now. At this time, I am not taking poetry commissions but if you’d like to commission a book review from me, here’s the place to do it! I hope you gained a little something from my work, or just liked reading it. I love you, and I’ll see you next week!