Young Poets

:this is not a poem it’s a warning label

— there is no title because titles are for books that finish —

the ceiling coughs again // someone’s frying onions downstairs / or burning memory — hard to tell these days

(i asked my mother when she stopped praying: she said when the gods started charging rent for miracles)

a phone rings in the other room. no one answers. we like it better that way. dial tone is a kind of lullaby.

[insert photo of a boy] caption: “he was always smiling” scroll like like forget

some girl on the train carves her name into the seat with a compass so the plastic remembers her longer than people do

&&& my friend says trauma’s a currency now everyone’s broke but showing off receipts

what do you call a country that loves statues more than breathing children?

this isn’t poetry it’s graffiti on the inside of your ribs written in coughs erased by hunger

(come closer)

there’s a final line here but it refuses to arrive.

[things i can’t put in my résumé]

— 2013: i learn silence is a second language. fluent by 15.

— afternoons smell like chalkdust + disappointment. my school says god made us equal. my lunchbox says otherwise.

— i google “how to disappear without dying.” clear search history. do it again.

once a boy called me “poet.” i haven’t written since. the compliment was too sharp.

my grandmother’s hands were maps but no one read them. she died with directions to somewhere we can’t afford to go.

[intermission: your mother’s voice, off-key, singing to the gas stove.]

i tried therapy once. she asked “what brings you here?” i said: “my legs.” we both laughed. then we never met again.

sometimes i hold my breath at traffic lights just to see if i still want it back.

— i’ve been the secret. — i’ve been the one told the secret. — i’ve never been the one safe enough to be honest.

a girl wrote “u up?” at 3:47 a.m. i replied: “no.” she said: “same.” we haven’t spoken since.

add to experience:

eating alone in public

crying in the shower but poetically

becoming someone else’s ‘almost’

references available on request. but they all moved cities.

I Meet Your Friends at the Gallery Opening

and one asks how we met and the answer is Hinge, but I’m not sure

you want me saying so. Instead we have a back-and-forth of ums

and wells and he drops the question. We circle round displays

of plastic fruit, films of the sea projected on the walls, collages

of dogs in caravans, new-age hippy moon-gazing hares.

It’s the art of young people, it’s warm art, art unafraid to be

cute. Sometimes there’s something daring in being cute, lovely,

girlish. I think but don’t say this. A bad idea to share too many

thoughts with new people, too many chances to be trapped.

With mild regret I purchase several overpriced flutes of white,

stand around in circular groups while people who already know

each other do the talking. We’ve only met a few times. You hold

my hand and ask what I think of it all. I tell you that each time

we loop around, I’m scared I’ll knock the fruit down with my bag.

The Lady and the Unicorn

We saw it in Paris, an escape from the derelict Airbnb plastered

with signs warning of rats and lead paint. A mistake to book it

without scrolling to the one-star reviews, really. On one such

excursion, we found ourselves in a shadow-room of tapestry,

one taking up each wall, named after touch, smell and desire.

The robed woman and her horned companion at the centre

delighted in earthly pleasures of birdsong, perfume, mirrors.

In the background, various creatures floated without place or

dimension: dog, lamb, rabbits cleaning their paws, white as

a hare’s stomach, faultless among a thousand woven flowers.

With her falconer’s glove, the lady waited for wildness to find her.

We sat in the dark, studying the details, wondered where we’d next

bide time before braving the crumbling apartment again,

those sights and sounds and scents of earthly displeasure.

The Difficulty of Hare-Watching

Once you’ve found her

she’s gone

in a cartoon cloud

of smoke, her feet

conjuring dust

with a skedaddle

sound effect. Like that,

she becomes the space

that is not a hare.

Once you’ve found her,

she’s gone.

Painting a Blue Hare

and considering Picasso, who took time

between preying on teen girls

to capture the world’s sorrows,

poor widows and addicts.

My hare lives in different depths of

blue, her startled eye a rock pool,

her variations of fur a tumbling field.

My hare too is mournful, in her case

mourning what life could have been

if she were free to sit un-preyed upon.