Today, I want to share some of the poems I’ve written recently and talk a bit about them.

This semester, I’ve had the opportunity to be a TA for an Introduction to Writing Poetry course, taught by a professor I really admire. As I prepare to graduate and begin the next step of my journey towards becoming a professor of Creative Writing, the experience I’ve had as a TA has been quite valuable. Slowly, I am becoming increasingly confident in my abilities to teach and help others find their own voices.

shine

find you kneeling
at the chasm of my mouth
as though in prayer
and the sun obliges
spilling amber onto our bare bodies beautiful
because of their brevity like tulips deciding
the time to wilt is now
burnt smell of twilight’s ashes
i shift through the wreckage of a morning
looking for shards
of gold and you
my part-time lover
beaming at me light falling
from cheek to chest to chance
you are my soulmate of the hour
in a haze of gold
we glitter—two fools

As I continue to hone my poetic craft, I’m having fun experimenting with different styles. Overall, I’ve found a home in the flexible lines of free-verse, and one of the things I love about this style is it’s versatility. I used a lot of enjambment in this one, and chose to leave out punctuation so that the reader can approach this poem at any pace.

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Swipe Culture

It’s Friday night and I’m cruising
the grocery store I’m pretty
sure I’ve seen your face somewhere
too close to the cherries
are in season right?

Did I make you mad
when I left
you on read in pursuit
of pixelated pleasure?

Swap-swipe drip wipe my lips
so sick from every angle
of your composite profile

Did anybody hear me when
I said I should’ve left
to my own devices I’ll blow
off any semblance of what’s right
secure and easy in my victimhood I recognize
myself vivisected on your screen and
I’ll throw up
a towel over that whoring mirror until I’m ready
to see if anything worth
saving is left

Speaking of enjambment, I really had a good time making use of it in this one. I wrote this last semester when I was taking Poetry Workshop, and pushing myself to expand my subject matter and approaches to poetry in general. The class was quite challenging–in more ways than one–and I came through it a much stronger writer and reader.

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The Cost of Living

Coca-Cola wants to sell me
eyeshadow. Pull your mask
up. So tired of
10 Things You Didn’t Know Were Wrong
With Your Face Until
pull your mask back up. You saw
them unfurled across some
beautifully generic stranger’s cheekbones.
I’m looking for The Right Thing that will
make you love your mask
is slipping off.

Bleached blonde in a
bralette turns heads so brave, like,
nobody sees the societal shame festering
across the unmasked.
Tell me what’s courageous. Tell me
how to be
who you are and what’s your favorite
color and why and how much
did you pay for that?

This piece came to life from something I typed in my notes app in a Target bathroom. Humble beginnings, I suppose. Again, I had fun playing with enjambment here, as well as sound. One thing I advise the students in the Intro to Writing Poetry class I’m a TA for to do is read their poetry aloud. When I do this, I find that it helps me spot areas that either flow really well, or (more often) parts that are a little bit clunky. (I once accidentally found a phrase that sounds like “ribbit,” in a poem that definitely wasn’t about frogs when I read it out loud.) This poem’s roots lie in a high-anxiety situation; I was in a vulnerable emotional place and had gone to Target to meander until I felt better–except that backfired, and I panicked. I found myself trying to calm down in a bathroom stall where the framework of this poem came together.

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Asherah

Golden curls upon amber waves,
mouth agape, scream, shout Your prowess,
teeth ablaze with Your might and mercy, though obscured.
Who is like You, all-encompassing in Your
supreme holiness? Who is Your master, Your timekeep, Your mate?
Who kisses you and illuminates Your dreary days?
Who gallops through Your dreams, on a golden coach,
the arches of her feet curved like
Your eternal blushing smile?
And who caresses You so gently, washes
the suds from between your shoulder blades,
removes the grime
from beyond Your reach? Who is there
on the nights You wake up choking
on nightmares, thin film of shame
for the world You left condemned?
Who taught you how to love so wholly
You had to relearn how to sing just so
You could extoll her virtues and her holiness
in ways so profound it was as though
You had not known
anything true until her touch brought life
back from the cusp of unlove and destruction.

This poem came from an in-class writing exercise I designed. Students drew a slip of paper with a literary device on it at random as well as a postcard with a piece of art on it. The assignment was to describe what was on the card while making use of the device they had drawn. I didn’t take a picture of the art card I drew, but it was a golden sculpture of a lion’s head. The device I got was apostrophe (addressing someone/something that is not physically present). As often happens, I began writing about the lion, and my thoughts turned to other things. In this case, it was a TikTok I saw a long time ago that talked about “God’s wife being written out of the Bible.” This figure, Asherah, has been resurfacing in my thoughts for a while now, and I was really pleased with how this poem turned out.

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Do you write poetry? Do you read poetry? Drop your favorite poems in the comments!