The Poetry Marathon

My roommate arrived one day frantic
locked out of her car and couldn’t be late for work again
so I gave her the keys to my own car.

I went for a walk across town and found her car,
keys dangling from the ignition
and the window rolled all the way down.

sinking

in a starless sky

paralyzed

can’t catch my breath

i know i’ll die if i stay here

but i can’t move for

this sharp pain of memory

i have certainly loved before, lost before, and missed before

but this is the third time and i am

going down

The sun never gets too hot on the west side;
instead of vineyards we had raspberry fields;
acre after acre of tangled vines.

In other towns, the trucks smell of black exhaust
but here, the trucks trail the scent of ripe raspberries as they roar by.

I went to the upick and wandered through the field, down the row of vines until the farmer was out of sight
and filled my little bucket for jam, for pies, for something to create.
The air is perfectly still but still the dust sticks to my legs.
Children call from row to row with red-stained mouths and the bees hum

and the entire world is reduced to these 5 acres in this moment.

At sixteen the world was a song and the song was exciting
every day fresh, everything happening

The morning dew on the grass and the sun on the street were pure magic
and we shot out of our beds just go to out and see.

We went to school, then college, and got jobs and husbands and wives
who left us with debt and tears
We dragged ourselves out of our beds and drank coffee and then
We dragged ourselves out of our cubicles and drank cocktails.

The morning dew wrecked our shoes and the sun was too hot
and our eyes were tired.

Until one day the boy from sixteen
showed up at my door
and kissed me hello.

*with lyric quoted from Les Mis

I used to write essays, stories, the words flowing out onto the page
but you–
you have messed me up
you have taken me down and now
I am liquid
my words fall out without structure
willy nilly

I am trailing word droppings at work
I am leaving words in the cart at the grocery
I am sorry for the puddle of words that fell out on to the broccoli
I am sure you didn’t expect to be picking consonants out of your casserole.

Even the librarian, who I thought would have been used to words, words, words everywhere
sighed as they fell out of my hair and came out of my pockets in the stacks.
Maybe because they’re not good words
I am a bad poet, a bad writer
(see, here is proof)

but you did this to me
you opened this fountain
that won’t stop flowing
like tears