it isn’t true but I wish it were, that when they can’t find it, they turn towards one another. As my friend bikes across the entire city so we can trade books and sit six feet apart, I’m sure humans do that exact thing. In a pandemic, there are still poetry readings and celebrations. InContinue reading “It is widely known that sunflowers bend towards the sun”
Author Archives: ampersandthenwhat
There is a certain kind of tired that only comes from arguing with your own body continuously
please open the jar don’t sit down yet just don’t call off again this week I am thirty-four and I have the hand strength of a fifty-three year old. I am thirty-four and age means nothing in the face of chronic illnesses. When my DNA was coded, my connective tissue was made too loose. NowContinue reading “There is a certain kind of tired that only comes from arguing with your own body continuously”
I am somewhere beyond this existence.
the walls are made of flowers holding hands. no one gets grief for holding anyone else’s hand here you’re allowed to feel whatever you feel cry in any gender and still be seen as strong we know nothing of prejudice, capital, or constraint here save historical examples archaic relics, reminders of who we will neverContinue reading “I am somewhere beyond this existence.”
“Doesn’t it get very exhausting, viewing the world through that angry feminist lens?”
or, alternatively titled, ‘a study on how to dissect my anger and find it villain,’ find it too sharp, too mirror too reflective and you didn’t really want to see yourself as the problem did you so instead it is me and I am told to put on something else like maybe it would beContinue reading ““Doesn’t it get very exhausting, viewing the world through that angry feminist lens?””
When I laugh it is a holy sound
It is the thing I do in rebellion to the many things that try to trim my joy and sometimes gouge and sometimes win so when I smile, It is vast like the solar system stretched like a big top tent, wide as a tug boat pulling everything I’ve ever been right alongside me andContinue reading “When I laugh it is a holy sound”
“Our tongues have a cadence.”
They move to whatever they move to and I don’t think we’ve taught them how to roll stack slide swirl push p u l l play so effortlessly off of and on top of around but never at expense of one another. their synchronicity teaches me to displace my worry of where things will goContinue reading ““Our tongues have a cadence.””
My shame is a mold that only grows in the parts of me I refuse to shed light on
refuse to talk about. I need a better flashlight a braver mouth a new dictionary to find fresh words to form familiar sounds in new ways. I write a lot of poems about growth but have you ever loved something so much you didn’t notice it never loved you back? sometimes, I’m so focused onContinue reading ” My shame is a mold that only grows in the parts of me I refuse to shed light on”
I write the wrong poem and it scores well
every season I compete with it. a few seasons in I write the one I finally mean on a subject previously too scared to touch Ironically about a time I was too scared to touch (and in both cases I didn’t speak up until) I touch stage, kill the poem the audience exactly the rightContinue reading “I write the wrong poem and it scores well”
I am not the handcuffs on my bed post,
nor what you assume they say about me. I am the steady voice that asks them to be used. not just IN control I am control even when I consensually give it away. I am a sovereign entity, allocating all this power exactly as I see fit, boundless even when bound I am safe. IContinue reading “I am not the handcuffs on my bed post,”
I. In my family it is an heirloom to stand in doorways with men and watch their going
to freeze in gridlock and wonder, “Should I revolt against this? Should I play this game of tug of warring elements? Is that form of protest worth the tsunami?” I am the one in the family who usually decides it is. As I watch my tight rope walker fall or jump or dive from theContinue reading “I. In my family it is an heirloom to stand in doorways with men and watch their going”
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