Sample Poems
HOW I BECAME SETH ROGEN, WHO SHAVED HIS BUDDY’S HEAD WITH THE SAME CLIPPERS HE USED TO SHAVE HIS OWN BALLS
You tied your long hair into 50 little pony-tails
and then let your girls snip them off.
All I did was notice that when people decide to take down a very old tree,
they climb it first. They saw off limb by limb as they climb down. They never shout
“timber.”
And I saw a picture of a loose doorknob tied on doubtfully with frayed string.
You didn’t tell me I would know all the nurses at the Infusion Center. One has a son
who plays baseball. One has a daughter who chases my son on the playground and
pinches him. One used to live in my house.
You never told me a bat would fly into my hair.
Why don’t we just get high and pick up guys half our age?
You put all your soft pony-tails in a box and closed the lid.
I slept on the top bunk of a little girl’s bed. Just for one night. Without changing my
clothes. All I did was read People Magazine to see Who Wore It Better, while you
meditated.
Some of the nurses are into Yoga and wear Sanskrit pendants around their necks.
You reminded me that without you, I wouldn’t have gone to college. I reminded you
that your big brother hit on me.
I saw a picture of a woman’s thin back next to a bowl of eels.
And another picture of a woman bent over, collapsed in a deep bow, her naked skin
covered in a soft pelt of bees.
The Burden of Light: Poems on Illness and Loss. Tanya Chernov, ed. Foreword Literary, 2014. - Book link
MY MOTHER'S HANDS
after Elizabeth Arnold
pale squid
tossing up on surf-swept
land, now dried with salt and slag.
They jangle with metallic junk
caught on each wrist--once
they were bouyant, the only thing around
to cling to.
One they forced soiled socks into a small
dirty-with-words mouth.
Why not keep fighting?
Because she loves. And cannot speak.
Because it has always been useless,
all ways of unleashing, just so much ink.
Fifth Wednesday Journal, Fall 2015
You tied your long hair into 50 little pony-tails
and then let your girls snip them off.
All I did was notice that when people decide to take down a very old tree,
they climb it first. They saw off limb by limb as they climb down. They never shout
“timber.”
And I saw a picture of a loose doorknob tied on doubtfully with frayed string.
You didn’t tell me I would know all the nurses at the Infusion Center. One has a son
who plays baseball. One has a daughter who chases my son on the playground and
pinches him. One used to live in my house.
You never told me a bat would fly into my hair.
Why don’t we just get high and pick up guys half our age?
You put all your soft pony-tails in a box and closed the lid.
I slept on the top bunk of a little girl’s bed. Just for one night. Without changing my
clothes. All I did was read People Magazine to see Who Wore It Better, while you
meditated.
Some of the nurses are into Yoga and wear Sanskrit pendants around their necks.
You reminded me that without you, I wouldn’t have gone to college. I reminded you
that your big brother hit on me.
I saw a picture of a woman’s thin back next to a bowl of eels.
And another picture of a woman bent over, collapsed in a deep bow, her naked skin
covered in a soft pelt of bees.
The Burden of Light: Poems on Illness and Loss. Tanya Chernov, ed. Foreword Literary, 2014. - Book link
MY MOTHER'S HANDS
after Elizabeth Arnold
pale squid
tossing up on surf-swept
land, now dried with salt and slag.
They jangle with metallic junk
caught on each wrist--once
they were bouyant, the only thing around
to cling to.
One they forced soiled socks into a small
dirty-with-words mouth.
Why not keep fighting?
Because she loves. And cannot speak.
Because it has always been useless,
all ways of unleashing, just so much ink.
Fifth Wednesday Journal, Fall 2015
