-brooke ashley kolcow
chris leclair
the boy described in this poem is a real person. he has not read this poem and i am on the fence about whether i want him to or not, because while it would probably be 'totally hilarious' i think he wouldn't really understand the significance and would be offended. does that make this a 'mean' poem? i'm not sure. it recalls a feeling of being vaguely acquainted with someone but knowing strange and intimate secrets about them.
who even reads orpheus
this poem came from a time of great existential despair. i do not actually own a harp nor have i ever played one. it's kind of about like, how even though we think about other people, even random irrelevant ones so incredibly often, it is really hard (at least for me) to imagine someone else thinking of me. like, i might easily think of my second-grade teacher who i will likely never see again who gave me an A+ for my poem "turtles are pritty" (i still contend this was the high point of my literary career) but it seems impossible for even a close acquaintace to be thinking of me remotely, i suppose because we have no experience with other people's thoughts and only know what they choose to put out there. you never can really, truly know what another person is thinking until they say it, i think. this poem is specifically inspired by a boy who i know who is the one that i got the title from. i think i said something about how not a single person in albany, new york knows who the poet orpheus is (true fact) and he was like, who even reads orpheus and talks about him on a regular basis? that's so fucking pretentious (also a true fact) and this ended up kind of giving me a bit more perspective. i don't judge people based on their taste so much anymore. the thing with thinking about someone and them thinking about you really works. try it.
i think i may be living in someone else's solipsistic universe
for the record i actually find solipsism 'kind of dumb' but i guess it's a legitimate philosophy for someone if they want to think that the world revolves around them and could not continue without them. the cute little scene described in this poem happened during one of my various walks around the suburbs of albany (which are really dire and 'depressingly homogenous', don't ever go to them) and it basically happened exactly as i described it. i don't think i did the 'dandelions blowing in the wind' justice, as the white seeds flying through the air really are lovely.
walking home with you from the summer fair, i look at the tiny stars in the purple-black sky
this poem was about the day i went to the fair with an acquaintance and we ended up staying very late and walking on these wide country roads trying to find our way. i think i write my best poems about people who i had one interesting experience with and never really crossed paths with again. i wish i had more to say about this poem. i am a little bit afraid of ferris wheels, but i'm more afraid of spiders. my next book should be called "getting over my fear of insects". ladybugs are cute, and so are butterflies. i know a girl who is afraid of butterflies. if i see a bee or spider though i get really scared. i'm trying to get over it because i'm vegan and vegans should love all life, even spiders and bees. my friend said, "i'm the kind of person who puts a bug in a cup and takes it outside to the grass." and i think that's a good way to be. once one of my teachers killed a bee and it was on the desk right next to me and i had to watch it die for like, ten minutes. i felt really uncomfortable. okay, i think this is long enough now.
maureen sill
maureen sill wrote a poem called "michael doherty" which i think will be in her upcoming split poetry zine and this is it:
“michael doherty”
by maureen sill.
depressed teenagers
are a valuable demographic
horrible tumors will take over their brains
in their mid-twenties
when they relocate to cities with competitive developing art communities
when they listen to music that was made by a person or several persons on a computer
so did you have to spell check your poetry
for honors english class
a fifteen year old boy sits in the public library on a six year old computer
waiting for his mom to pick him up with their family car
and performs a google image search on
the world's first plastic surgery
and then walks to a gold glowing field that is nearby
with grass that is yellow and a little green growing up to his tiny, depressed, vegan waist
he sits down in the middle of the field and then lies down in the middle of the field
the middle of the field tries to ignore him,
a blade of oats in his throat
tiny molecules of blood,
astonished by circumstance
i told her i would write a poem called "maureen sill" and that is what this poem is.
komodo dragon boy and me
this poem is about my childhood. i still know komodo dragon boy and i think he's like autistic or something? but i don't actually know. i remember one time in the sixth grade i went over to his house and it was really weird. his little brother was playing videogames and eating cheerios in his underpants and his dad was like, really hardcore about rights of divorced dads, i think he was the leader of a group dedicated to it. uhm, they were nice people, but i never went back.
words and colors, words that are colors
this is one of the first 'good' poems i wrote that other people actually liked. i've always had a soft spot for it even though it's pretty old (like, from the ninth grade i think?). i remember seeing this random girl in the mall crying and me and my friend asking her what was wrong, and she was all like incoherent about random stuff we couldn't help her with. i have no idea. that was a pretty bad day.
my parents' t.v. is bigger than i am
my parents really do have a gigantic television set. it's part of the reason i always hang out at other people's houses instead of mine. i'm embarrassed of it. t.v. makes me feel so bad, i used to enjoy it as a kid but now i refuse to watch it at all. it just gives me a bad, hopeless feeling in my stomach. also i think i have insomnia and it fuels my poetry.
the difference between us is like the difference between a sparrow and a finch
birds are beautiful. i like birds. as a kid i used to be very fascinated by pigeons in the street whenever we would go to boston or new york city. i wished we had them in albany and didn't understand why other people didn't care about them. i want to have a pet carrier pigeon to deliver letters for me. seems 'more efficient' than balloons. justine said this poem was 'dark' for my poetry.
phyllis stone
if i had to pick one poem out of these as a favorite it would be this one i think. this poem is about escapism and society and lots of other convoluted things. this poem makes me want to have a tea party, though in the poem i suppose they sort of represent the oblivion of pop-culture.
4, 304, 795 sad red blood cells
i remember walking outside in the cold to the mall with this fat puerto rican girl and she was talking about something super-irrelevant like, some sex joke or something, and then she was like, michael you're a poet, someone should make a movie about your life. the idea for this poem kind of sprang from that. another distinct memory i have is once in summer camp when i was little we were eating those little snack pretzels from a box and they were all gone and for some reason we were having this kid give us the salt from the bottom so we could eat it (ewwww) and at one point after this had been going on a bit, he was like "i'm licking my fingers to get the salt out you know" and we were all like ewww gross! i can't remember whether this story has anything to do with the poem or not.
new england is beautiful.
yes, my family really talks like that.
------
the song that the title of this ebook came from is by maureen sill, here it is on last.fm, you can download it for free
and without further ado, here is my masterpiece:
turtles are pritty
turtles are pritty
so we shud not hunt them
or any animals
becuz we need to proteck them
for our children
and their children
turtles lay ther eggs on beeches
