Five Poems, Five Seconds Each
Poems for when you're tight on time.
Hi friends.
Hope you’re all enjoying Labor Day weekend, whatever that means these days. Lakes, meats on grills, responsibly distanced get togethers? I’m just glad it doesn’t mean I have to go to school on Tuesday, or ever again, even though a psychic I saw last March, two days before the world shut down, said it “was written in the stars” that I’d go back to school. No, Joan, I will not.
Speaking of school, in one of my Covid cleaning spells, I found this tiny diary entry I’d written when I was nine years old. I was clearly annoyed at Hannah – what was “nice teeth, Megan” supposed to mean? – but now it reads like poetry to me. The indiscernible scribble at the end indicates I went a bit mad.
Noah was so cute. All boys named Noah are cute.
12/3/97
Dear Diary,
Today Noah or Bill said a funny joke, so Jacque, Sarah, Matt and so on laught (I was nine!), me too. Then Hannah said, “Nice teeth Megan.” Then I said thanks
In that vein, here is a series of itty bitty poems I’ve written, mostly while in the state between heartbreak and injustice from heartbreak. One or two are from 2015, one or two are from yesterday.
Pisces
It's all the same, isn't it?
Morning blackens to night,
Mercury stumbles backwards
And you still can't tell me the truth.
//
Add It to the List
Pay rent, find God, sail the ocean
Alright, fine, I’ll get to it tomorrow
//
BPM
But you said
And I believed you
//
Tell Me
Tell me I'm pretty
Tell me I'm smart
I'll smack God in the face
before you pull us apart
//
9
The wind is going to blow the summer off our trees
the freckles off our shoulders
the edge off our love
That’s September for you.
Reading materials:
Something I wrote: If I'd known a pandemic was coming and I wouldn’t be allowed into Amsterdam for a while, I woulda hopped on that 5:00 p.m. direct Delta flight and never seen any of you again. Jk! (But only kinda.) I miss everything about it and everyone in it, namely stroopwafels, a reasonable government and SWEETS hotels, which are tiny historic bridge houses that have been converted into one-room hotels. I stayed in one a couple Septembers ago and wrote about my sweet SWEETS experience for Here, um, here.
Something I did not write: I can’t stop thinking about this Atlantic piece – Mask Up and Shut Up – about how if we all just stfu Covid would have no one to cling to. It’s more nuanced than that, of course, but I like the thought of everyone shutting up for a while. A worldwide “shh.”
Something I wish I wrote: This poem, written by an anonymous child, who suffered through brunch at the restaurant I used to work at. My hostess (hi Hannah!) and I found this written in one of the kids’ notebooks at the end of a shift. It...speaks to me.
‘Til next time,
Megan
Love love love