The Burrowing Poems

I successfully defended my undergraduate honors thesis, a chapbook of poetry largely about depression, on Tuesday. It was painful to have to acknowledge the events of the past four months. Much to my embarrassment, I broke down halfway through the reading, on a fairly simple line:  ”Where did you go?”  

Where did I go?  And will I ever come back?

Or will part of me always be leaning over the edge?

Say tomorrow doesn’t come.

Say the moon becomes an icy pit.

Say the sweet-gum tree is petrified.

Say the sun’s a foul black tire fire.

Say the owl’s eyes are pinpricks.

Say the raccoon’s a hot tar stain.

Say the shirt’s plastic ditch-litter.

Say the kitchen’s a cow’s corpse.

Say we never get to see it: bright

future, stuck like a bum star, never

coming close, never dazzling.

Say we never meet her. Never him.

Say we spend our last moments staring

at each other, hands knotted together,

clutching the dog, watching the sky burn.

Say, It doesn’t matter. Say, That would be

enough. Say you’d still want this: us alive,

right here, feeling lucky.

- ADA LIMÓN

I woke to a voice within the room. perhaps.

The room itself: “You’re wasting this life

expecting disappointment.”

I packed my bag in the night

and peered in its leather belly

to count the essentials.

To the east, the flood has begun.

Men call to each other on the water

for the comfort of voices.

Love surprises us.

It ends.

- ELIZA GRISWOLD

I say I want to save the world but really / I want to write poems all day…

   -  Dorothea Lasky, from “Ars Poetica”

So here we are again, friends. Many bad things have happened to me over the last year. Many good things have happened, too. Why is it so easy to give yourself over to melancholy? Why does sadness seize you even if you resist? So much of my dark has devoured my light. So often I am emptied of my goodness. 

Despite all the bad, my own writing has found a new beginning. I will be starting my MFA in Poetry at Arizona State this Fall. I have been gifted with three fully funded years to teach and write and read and grow and travel under the mentorship of an incredible array of poets. I’m not sure whether I’ll ever feel like I deserve this opportunity, but here it is, all the same. I’m more grateful than words can tell. I came so close to missing this.

With that in mind, I want to make this a space to celebrate the good and pay tribute to the bad. Neither could exist without the other. I want to document it all. 

As much as it pains me to say so (and as my four month absence from this project has probably indicated), I am too tired to post a poem every day. Life has spent me up, and most days I’m just searching for the energy to get out of bed. So I will try to share what I can here, and I will do my best not to slip away again. But it happens. Sometimes, it just happens.

Thank you, friends, for your patience. Stay tuned.

- Alexandra 

To my first love, I wept profusely.

These tears confused the boy, and he would act.

Generally, he took me out to eat.

I grew fat, sobbing my way into some of the best

restaurants in Richmond.

My first husband ignored the initial shattering of tears.

But if I went on groveling, wailing long enough

he’d collect me from the floor

give me a bit more grocery money, wipe my eyes

tell me it would be okay by and by.

My second husband despised my tears.

He’d seen women crawl and shake enough,

said the vipers can enter a trance at will

and let their best sobs heave ho to twist a man

and bend him into shape.

I trouble not this third man with my tears.

Have in fact forgotten how to cry

and in forgetting have grown steel eyes,

a molten core like mad Vesuvius, am held in check

by nothing but the weather and the whims of fate.

- KATE GALE

on sunday

i woke up

& slid from under

your arms

to hit the

8 a.m. sidewalk

with no intention

of ever coming

back

i only turned around

because

i left my cigarettes

next to

the bed

- CHRIS KORNACKI

the best often die by their own hand

just to get away,

and those left behind

can never quite understand

why anybody

would ever want to

get away

from

them

- CHARLES BUKOWSKI