can anyone

you, with the calloused fingertips and the

petty change glittering in the velvet lining

of your instrument casket--

you, slapping the end of your monogrammed pen

against a maze of scribbled diagnoses and

arched eyebrows--

you, charcoal in hand, setting fire to a

canvas, black embers settling on your

skin, cool and white--

you there, perched on a thundercloud,

spitting lightning and brushing the finger of sin,

knowing--

can anyone make sense of it

?

backspace

i've taken the eraser from my pencil

(that should've been more eloquently stated)

(i shouldn't use adverbs--show, not tell)

(do i have too much punctuation?)

the lead is going to flick out of [crap]

(that doesn't sound good)

thank goodness for backspace

no, that gives away the meaning of the title

well

damn

--fin.

"The key is...just don't edit yourselves. You suck the life out of your writing"

dear matt

I.

i dated your little brother once,

if you could even call it dating--

we hugged with stiff arms and whispered

"hi" in the hall and that was the extent

of our courtship.

II.

i spoke to you every so often

at school plays and fundraisers and when

you and your friends followed me and my friends

on the walk home from school, shouting after us,

a cackle bubbling in your throat.

III.

i remember when you ditched me at Arby's

at my going-away party,

but came back because you felt bad

(though you swore it was

the curly fries)

IV.

you died today.

electrocuted. they told me you had to be

"put out" because i guess you decided to light on fire, too

the streetlights and houses closed their eyes and

turned their heads. you always turned heads.

i haven't seen you in four years, and i'll never see you again,

yet here i am, thinking of ways to please an audience that's still alive.

i use personification and parallelism to keep them awake

but the fact is you're dead now and this poem doesn't matter and

there's nothing more to say.

for Matthew Nunn

"happy birthday, murrka"

cheap beer dripped down his chin and
he kept the beat alright,
clapping and sloshing around.

library lawn

we flattened our bodies to the ground

listened for a whisper of poetry in the turn of a page

we asked each other the meaning of things

discussed the weight of words

we flicked away the horseflies

shook our feet at their flitting touch

we questioned transcendentalists

sighed and wondered if they had it right

we shredded blades of grass

scattered them for ants to drag winged corpses through

we spoke of fate and God

and found we cannot live deliberately

and it sounds like

* at SYWC, we wrote poems from a limited perspective, i.e., ourselves as children. or martians. i chose the former:

pack a bag, you say

and i look up at you. the

beauty of your mouth always

catches me by surprise. how it

soothes me, lingers in my dreams, laughs

at my jokes. we're leaving,

you say, and there is a dissonant note

in your voice that i can't identify

but it doesn't sound like love.

get in the car, you say,

looking down at me. the

shape of your eyebrows always

tells me if you're happy or sad,

tired or excited. but this pattern is

less familiar. hurry,

you say, and there is a break

in your voice that i've heard before

and it sounds like tears.

i'm taking the kids, you say

and i look up and see the two of you. the

clench in your jaw never

gets that scary, not even when i said

shut up or when Jordie hit me. i want

a divorce,

you say, and there is a knife

in your voice that glints with rage

and it sounds like aching.

i'm hungry, you say,

glancing in the mirror. the

smile you're wearing almost

looks like a big fake and it

doesn't match your eyes like it does

when you are really happy. where's daddy,

i saw, and there is an unbreakable silence

before you sigh and tell me.

and it doesn't sound like love

anymore

extraneous

i cannot shine in a crowd of shadows.

i am a lone grain of sand beneath

the swelling sea,

swept away by a slight ocean breeze,

wavering uncertainly among the ships

and seaweed.

i cannot stand in a forest of redwood.

i am a mere sapling buried in

the ground;

even clusters of soil pile taller than i

shall ever grow.

cannot, cannot, cannot.

when will you, you

timid creature?

i cannot speak in a room

full of voices. i am a shy whisper

swallowed in a shout.