Rituals of Care
We put our bodies on tables in partial states of dress. We take a breath in like a stray, consciously and with care. The bed for the breath is our body, already folded out. We are couched in this calm and then we are not.
We put our bodies on tables in partial states of dress. We take a breath in like a stray, consciously and with care. The bed for the breath is our body, already folded out. We are couched in this calm and then we are not.
Poets write the tales of woe
others carry but are unable to
unfold or recall.
Soothing words act as a salve.
Sutures for bleeding hearts.
Releasing the floodgate of hurts.
Reassuring – You are not alone!
We were supposed to pack up
the pieces of what we were
into nice boxes, but
you evicted me—
keeping just enough to comfort you & scattering
the streets with more than enough to haunt me.
Your kiss shoved me out the door,
& I heard it lock. I thought
you truly loved me after all
the words you said to me, so surely
I could’ve stayed longer. Instead, I should’ve known
to have already left. In my mind, every night
when I wake, startled, you still
hold me against your chest,
& I keep apologizing—
I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, please
don’t leave me. I’ve learned
that I’m a vagrant lover
in the spaces of other people’s
homes & hearts, as much as
I try to only eat the scraps
& limit the space I take up,
I’m sorry that that’s still
too much, & that all the love
I have is too broken to be
valuable. Time is too fragile—
I should’ve learned long ago
that everything dies if
it is paired with the storm of
my love. We no longer speak,
but I apologize to you
over & over, hoping that the tomorrow
in which we live will never come,
& that I’ll be so perfect
you couldn’t imagine any alternative
to “I’m not leaving anytime”
& you forget the soon.
You’re a lawyer now.
You’re married now.
You don’t think about me now.
But,
I suffer now.
I am ashamed now.
I am plagued by you now.
You stole six years of my life,
And I still think about it now.
I was five,
And I am twenty-two now.
I didn’t understand at the time,
But I understand now.
I loved you back then,
But I fucking hate you now.
I look through the mail
sympathy cards
I’ll paste them into a book
They seem like sacred relics
now. I read each one
noting the signatures
inside my collection
of artefacts most precious
I lose myself in thought
not knowing what to do
with my days, each one so long,
so laborious, so pointless.
The clock is ticking. How
do I stop it?
Cross the
singing
mud of
pain
Open
into unfolding
where flame
body wings
trill blue
Strum
the tumble
of
sudden laughter like
a
burning star
the world rushing in
Unleash
the wild the
sweet the mother
song the crown of
bloom
into
your heart.
~ Erasure of Dorianne Laux’s poem “Heart of Thorns”
1: Five
Maybe if I try
Really hard, just sit down and
Concentrate, I can
Write a haiku full
Of haikus. Wouldn’t that be
Fun? Yes, but no fair
Using filler words
To pad the lines. No cheating
Words to favor form.
Let the rope wrinkles
Unwrinkle as they will, as
They must. Medium
And message mingle,
It’s true, and yet the simple
Haiku transcends both.
2: Seven
A lover laughed at
My love of all things meta.
I think she thought I
Overused the word,
Applying it too often.
Indiscriminate,
Willy-nilly. And
She was probably right. I
Am indeed given
To hyperbole–
Exaggeration, even.
But I confess when
Real is layered and
Marbled with adjacent Real,
I find the surreal
Revealed. The Reals yield,
And fade in importance — a
Reality I
Love to live. Like a
Haiku full of haikus: that
Is some meta shit.
Three: 5
I love to chase a
Haiku’s wrinkles until they
Unfold and reveal
Their truths beneath my
Fingers. I think of rope that
Needs straightened. I think
This of all writing.
Not a great analogy,
I cannot deny.
But look what it can
Do — what it did! I chased those
Rope wrinkles ’til they
Unwrinkled, and lo!
Behold! Meta unlocked: A
Haiku of haikus.
pink pink
ear ear tail
green eye green eye tail tail tail
whisker nose whisker spot looooooooooooooong stripe tail
biiiiiiig smile spot spot spot spot spot spot
little chin spot spot spot spot spot spot
long spot spot spot spot spot long
fuzzy spot spot fuzzy
leg leg
paw paw
*best if viewed on computer
We are a guanxi of poets united by our distaste for schools, in-groups, elite clubs, handshakes secret or otherwise, anthologies that we’re not in, and the virus that is the twitterati. We believe we will ultimately be among the immortals – indeed we feel in our poem-bones that we already all – yet winning big prizes or publishing in prestigious journals or dropping important names (such as Ilya Kaminsky or Sharon Olds or Ocean Vuong or especially Jorie Graham) are surefire ways to be excommunicated, kicked out of the wilderness that we have made our poetic home. When we stand, we stand with the canceled and with founding member Luke Johnson, who inspired us into existence when he wrote that he is “really disappointed the poets I read doing tremendous work are wandering the wilderness”. But mostly we sit, in coffeeshops or lonely domiciles, in front of screens filling with our words. We doubt our words and ourselves and that breaks our hearts. We believe in residencies though we’ve never actually seen one. We roll in thunder. We collapse in ecstasy. We rip our clothes off and moon the moon while dancing the mysteries. We stand against rejection. We reject rejection. We believe that most poets were rejects in junior high, so some of them invented po-biz as a sort of junior high in which everyone talks about Keats and Plath rather than about varsity football and who has a crush on whom.
*The Wilderness School, est. May 2022, is a Facebook Group consisting of poets who are non-joiners. As such, it’s been an uphill climb trying to build membership. Still, we have somehow gathered over 100 members thus far. This is our manifesto, intended to be sort of tongue in cheek, kind of like “Personism” by Frank O’Hara.
