Dear reader. I think so much. It gets uncomfortable in my head with all those thoughts taking up so much space. I put my thoughts in poems so my brain doesn’t get squished by the weight of childhood memories consisting of me holding a stick in various locations and reruns of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Poems are like little glass jars filled with pickled organs. And the organs are so pickled, they’re almost translucent. As Bryce Shivers and Lisa Eversman of Portlandia fame once said, “We can pickle that.” That’s just beautiful. I made a custom embroidered pillow on the internet which says “We can pickle that.” I didn’t buy it though. One day, the whole world will be pickled. You can just dump stuff in a poem and then forget all about it. And then get famous while people theorize about your sexuality.

rupi kaur is an idol of mine. I made rupi kaur wallpaper which is just every headshot she’s ever taken printed out in separate 8x11s and taped together on my bedroom walls. I made my own rupi kaur body scrub which is just lotion which smells like what I think rupi kaur smells like. I’ve done a lot of research about the way she smells. My research indicates fresh rain, a vague awareness of death but no actionable concerns about it, and your friend’s old car with ketchup stains caked in the passenger’s seat are the three most active components of that classic rupi kaur scent. She’s my biggest role model in my poetry, too. I think she’s powerful. I think she’s graceful. I think she’s poetic. I aspire to be anything like her.

Below are some of my favorite poems I’ve written.

 

Hash-brown Triangles

they are hard yet soft

they are filled with snow

like a woman

 

no

i will not elaborate

 

Soiree

everyone is on fire

metaphorically

 

it is raining 

cheese geometry

 

she swallows the dance floor

she coughs up a little of the dance floor

 

she is happy

like a dragon

 

dear editor

i know dragons do not exist

 

but for our purposes

they do

 

it’s called poetry

have you ever heard of it

(Ed: sounds fake but okay)

 

Shakespeare class

shakespeare 

professor emeritus of love and innuendos

for whom murder is a plot point

murder is a tangled-up love letter

for him

shakespeare knew things

he saw a world where people threw up their brains

he saw a world without She’s the Man and that must have sucked

he saw a world where everybody’s name was william

like I’m pretty sure at least two-thirds of men were seriously named william

a name that falls out of bed with one sock on

william shakespeare hated being named william

he coped with dick jokes

and murder

but mostly murder

some people say william was a bunch of children in a trench coat

but that’s not true

some people say william was a time-traveling lesbian cyborg

but that’s not true

some people even say that william was a playwright

but that’s not true

william was one of us

a messy ball of red yarn and sexual frustration

but most of all murder

 

 

Milk

i reach for the milk

it is cold

naked

you stand in the doorway

who put you there

my left titty hurts

america

 

The Farm

they sell eggs

chickens are eggs with legs

the moonlight kisses my juul

i am knee-deep in chicken shit

heaven smells like a department store

i smell like chicken shit

i don’t even work here

i work in the library

but now all i have

is a chicken coop

named mod b