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stonepicnicking_okapiWarning: these are sad poems, the first one is personal, confessional sad and the second one is 'people are shitty and ruining the plant' sad. I hesitated to post them because I want this space to be positive and uplifting as a rule, but I like them both for different reasons. And, let's face it, a lot of poems are sad. They were both on the list of list poems.
String Theory by Sonya Huber
That which does not kill you makes you shudder, makes you flinch at sudden movements and tall men and deep voices and the smell of hard alcohol coming through someone’s skin and anything hovering over your left shoulder, makes you startle; makes you sit on the kitchen floor crying with a cup of water, fishing the bottle of Klonopin out of your shoulder bag’s front pocket as your throat closes and you say to your windpipe it’s just panic, with your laptop open on your thighs writing about Septimus from Mrs. Dalloway, makes you tell yourself how wrong it is to write about him in this kind of mood which is more of an infestation or a torrent than a feeling; makes you worry your teenage son will come in and see you on the floor crying and then makes you think you’re a bad mom merely because of the PTSD when of course other parents have it but also of course each of them is eating Cheetos in the garage and crying into the orange dust or running their knees into patella fragments or drinking in the laundry room or working until their eyes ache, all to blast it all away; makes you imagine a toaster trying through willpower alone to rewire itself and stop burning the toast; makes you tell yourself that you’re so broken you will need to be cremated at death because these molecules should not find themselves into another human body so soon, they need to be rocks and clouds for an aeon first, cleansed with bracing winds; makes you wish for the kind of mask other adults have crafted but that you took apart and threw away so you could breathe but now of course you are a child, a flower without skin; makes you cry before meetings because any hint of manipulation or shaming or aggression just takes you apart; makes you hate yourself for not being the kind of adult with a squint and a swagger and Teflon coating; makes you long for retirement; makes you know with certainty that you do not want to live forever because the string of frights get tangled and knotted into clumps and those clumps, not atoms, are the string theory that holds your ball of ache together.
-----
Nothing Wants to Suffer by Danusha Laméris
Nothing wants to suffer. Not the wind
as it scrapes itself against the cliff. Not the cliff
being eaten, slowly, by the sea. The earth does not want
to suffer the rough tread of those who do not notice it.
The trees do not want to suffer the axe, nor see
their sisters felled by root rot, mildew, rust.
The coyote in its den. The puma stalking its prey.
These, too, want ease and a tender animal in the mouth
to take their hunger. An offering, one hopes,
made quickly, and without much suffering.
The chair mourns an angry sitter. The lamp, a scalded moth.
A table, the weight of years of argument.
We know this, though we forget.
Not the shark nor the tiger, fanged as they are.
Nor the worm, content in its windowless world
of soil and stone. Not the stone, resting in its riverbed.
The riverbed, gazing up at the stars.
Least of all, the stars, ensconced in their canopy,
looking down at all of us— their offspring—
scattered so far beyond reach.
String Theory by Sonya Huber
That which does not kill you makes you shudder, makes you flinch at sudden movements and tall men and deep voices and the smell of hard alcohol coming through someone’s skin and anything hovering over your left shoulder, makes you startle; makes you sit on the kitchen floor crying with a cup of water, fishing the bottle of Klonopin out of your shoulder bag’s front pocket as your throat closes and you say to your windpipe it’s just panic, with your laptop open on your thighs writing about Septimus from Mrs. Dalloway, makes you tell yourself how wrong it is to write about him in this kind of mood which is more of an infestation or a torrent than a feeling; makes you worry your teenage son will come in and see you on the floor crying and then makes you think you’re a bad mom merely because of the PTSD when of course other parents have it but also of course each of them is eating Cheetos in the garage and crying into the orange dust or running their knees into patella fragments or drinking in the laundry room or working until their eyes ache, all to blast it all away; makes you imagine a toaster trying through willpower alone to rewire itself and stop burning the toast; makes you tell yourself that you’re so broken you will need to be cremated at death because these molecules should not find themselves into another human body so soon, they need to be rocks and clouds for an aeon first, cleansed with bracing winds; makes you wish for the kind of mask other adults have crafted but that you took apart and threw away so you could breathe but now of course you are a child, a flower without skin; makes you cry before meetings because any hint of manipulation or shaming or aggression just takes you apart; makes you hate yourself for not being the kind of adult with a squint and a swagger and Teflon coating; makes you long for retirement; makes you know with certainty that you do not want to live forever because the string of frights get tangled and knotted into clumps and those clumps, not atoms, are the string theory that holds your ball of ache together.
-----
Nothing Wants to Suffer by Danusha Laméris
Nothing wants to suffer. Not the wind
as it scrapes itself against the cliff. Not the cliff
being eaten, slowly, by the sea. The earth does not want
to suffer the rough tread of those who do not notice it.
The trees do not want to suffer the axe, nor see
their sisters felled by root rot, mildew, rust.
The coyote in its den. The puma stalking its prey.
These, too, want ease and a tender animal in the mouth
to take their hunger. An offering, one hopes,
made quickly, and without much suffering.
The chair mourns an angry sitter. The lamp, a scalded moth.
A table, the weight of years of argument.
We know this, though we forget.
Not the shark nor the tiger, fanged as they are.
Nor the worm, content in its windowless world
of soil and stone. Not the stone, resting in its riverbed.
The riverbed, gazing up at the stars.
Least of all, the stars, ensconced in their canopy,
looking down at all of us— their offspring—
scattered so far beyond reach.
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Date: 2024-01-26 08:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-01-26 08:43 pm (UTC)