critical theory is ruining my poetry

I started this poem crying cause 
I couldn’t remember all the things I wanted to say and 
I didn’t want to write it 
and I’m writing it on my computer and 
(Sofia calls, the room shakes, I think what if we went to get something sweet at snaxa)
and here I have to interrupt the million (not even born, not yet computed)
transgressions to say 
it’s odd to type a poem. 

Because everything needs to be written down, because parenthesis are my best friend. 
And I’m being influenced, obviously. 
That’s obvious, do I have to point it out every time, 
is there some dutiful truth? 

I don’t write what I want to. 

Because I feel too much each second to 
reminisce. (About the past hour.) 

I said, I can’t just read all fucking day 
and donned my hoodie like a habit 
and my ugly sneakers over my nice Tuesday dress 

and I snuck out back just to 
walk back up 
the same stairs and think, 
it’s been done. 

(This is how I describe leaving my dorm room to smoke a joint outside.) 

I kept so tidy when I got home from the day. 
(I call out the wanton
privilege of others and 
wallow in it myself.) 

Oh yeah, I gave Amberley lots of old clothes. I was happy. 

I talk to myself sooooo much. 
Sofia texts and asks if I want to go to snaxa. 
I didn’t have enough pages in my diary for this but I have pages here. 

Anyways, I 
I know I write “I” constantly.

Basically. Deep breath. Try again. 
Love doesn’t have to be Christian but it sounds like it cause that’s what I read and I should surrender to the- to what I feel without words without words I should feel 
this is why religion is constant and far reaching because it gives language to a feeling and it’s hard to have a feeling without the right language. 

Lord knows. There you go. 

But then half the language is fucking bullshit. And I believe things have always been hard for women and I also believe that there have been 
good men and free women 
that history cannot account for 
because they did not write. (We have some lucidity. Some poetry. But form overpowers. Maybe I don’t know enough. I am not up in the archives like my professor. 
I probably couldn’t handle it, if there was a flash of humanity from some random woman hundreds of years ago, I would just cry. I have cried.) 

So historians fantasize. They absorb as many Facts capital f as possible and then imagine. 

Anyways. I can’t really write about what I look like or what I felt like all day cause rn I’m nothing. 
I felt too full for food or music. 
I stomped to class very beautifully and ran into him and watched him see me yeah I looked pretty today for the first time in a while or at least I felt pretty for the first time in a while. 

When I thought good men and free woman I 
thought of him I said, muttering to myself, Jack, 
and when I said but he hurt me I replied 
not in any way you didn’t hurt him. 
And I muttered good men, good men. Free women. 

It’s easy to love a man who isn’t a misogynist, honestly. But honestly, it’s kind of easy to love one who is. More painful though. 

I gotta read. I don’t want to write about my mom. 

I am very even and blue and green on the rocking chair in the concrete crevice of utility closets. 
The chapel is in front of me to an angle it is very divisive of the blue and green night I am very symmetrical and again when I eat my bowl from the dining hall the 
sweep of beans and then of rice the one hunk of tofu left in the middle. 

I have no music tonight I have no music I am so silent and I never, never, have a lover. 

The fucking auto suggestions are driving me crazy. 
I cried cause I didn’t want to write this poem. 

I knew I would feel anxious if I smoked I said it out loud I still did it I’m glad that I did that’s just who I am. 

I cry now. I see language too much. I wrestle with words I am too aware of the wrestling I want to rest from it but it keeps me alive. 
I’m selfish. I’m self centered. 

When I microwave my food from the dining hall I stand away from the microwave and I think of the woman who cleaned our house, our housekeeper, I don’t know if housekeeper sounds weird but she was more than just a woman who cleaned our house - 
Lucy told me not to stand in front of the microwave because it gives cancer I never listened to her she died of stomach cancer. 
I didn’t know her enough, (I knew her almost my whole life)
I feel guilty. I hadn't seen her since high school I think. 

Big Tata died too, I remember suddenly while telling Sofia about my other great grandmother (who I know is dead.)  
It was never registered. 

I was saying I gotta give myself a break 
and I came back to Keelin and felt this old familiar love and thought how strange you can know someone through a screen and abandon them and come back and meantime they’ve been living their life and you just haven’t been watching. But you love them. Kinda. 

Amberley took so many of my clothes I was so glad hurray for spring cleaning and hurray for long dresses and lipstick and boots and then sometimes it’s all 
Mrs. Ramsay Mrs. Ramsay Mrs. Ramsay and you just want to 
fetch the bolt cutters. 
Do I have to do it like this, sitting, trying to remember lines I wrote in my head as they happened? Immediate language is the most beautiful, surely. From the emotion. The well I cannot close. 

I have to see the whole picture. I also have to see just what’s in front of me. It is impossible, past future and present blend and I 
drink it. 

I’ll probably get my period in ten days time. I felt it in my back today. 
I know things with a flash, lately, 
the pizza place will put salami on my order when I didn’t ask I 
say I can’t hear you can you please try another way (I learned that from astrolocherry on insta) 
and the fridge hum tension breaks semi silence prevails I can think. 

There are good men and free women, I can love everyone, I can sing if I trust myself, language is everything (everything does not suffice) I can laugh at life I can give myself a break there is a human hum like a mourning dove outside, 
amplified. 

The vending machine awaits. 

I like typing, I can cry easier, I think. Or the light makes my eyes hurt. 

I’ve been thinking so much about little me lately as I feel myself change as I look different in the mirror than I did when I was 18 I’ve been thinking about me when I was a little girl. 

The library sterilizes, although sometimes I cry in the cubicle. 

Blocks of text look like they cannot possibly contain anything. Blocks of typed text anyhow. Ugh. 

Ugh, I can’t fucking read all day, I can’t fucking write all day. 
I need oreos.

tira

They are letting my grandfather 

keep his grandfather’s well,

and the house is black with the worry 

of victory. 

How divorced like 

ledges of a quarry like

line breaks, like brittle

falling, am I from

this village,

my jets my purses my 

white boys. 

They played every day

in this preserved 

80s black and white 

wood, stalactite ceiling,

watching Naima do

her hair in the 

green acrylic hammam,

and now 

two of her children are old enough 

to be dentists and 

nobody speaks anymore, 

not even the dead. 

Sofia prizes loyalty 

but I think loyalty is a crass 

thing to value,

like money, 

or punctuality. 

I myself am

exceedingly loyal. 

The fireworks and 

inner workings political 

shootings mingle. 

Night alive with 

loss and aarous. 

I imagine in the 

humid insomnia who 

your wife will be.

Not me, she will be 

more American.

I am not trying 

to draw distinctions we 

are the same and 

he shows us how he 

stood in front of her bed 

talking, not knowing 

she was dead, you 

call me from Starbucks the 

minute I decide I cannot 

be apart from you. 

I am so 

frustrated with 

the pearlescent maggot 

inside of me that 

wants to win. 

proper american love poem

Your body,

soft and 

steady in it’s 

toughness beneath me. 

Your body,

the mottled color of 

the rusty earth

within me. 

A palette of 

rooty peace,

slab of 

orange knowing. 

My fingertips 

contort and compose to 

the phantom tune of 

your rounded shoulders. 

Mountains born for 

the climb of my love. 

I breathe here on 

white linen thousands of 

footsteps from touch,

humming quietly to 

all the miracle you are. 

You, my 

ever open 

supple sapling 

grazing by leaf like 

sight on horizon, 

my 

piece of ruby coal,

my eastern voice, 

defender of 

speechless,

tender worrier,

courageous greenness,

my heavy lunged 

quiet loving 

stroking, yearning, asking 

American boy. 

We are 

peaceful pieces,

braided strands of 

infinity,

we are 

warm in absence 

burning words to 

equanimity. 

You tremble, you 

collapse under 

congressmen and collared 

shirts and 

rise again like 

the tide to 

envelope, 

lift me,

on staggered limbs and 

carry me into the sea. 

You, beneath me the 

slab I am and 

positioned to melt into 

your rich earth with 

words like ants 

peppered through and 

weaving. 

Scarlet prickles of 

the ending taunt,

us too sunk to 

build beyond the 

flatness of belonging, 

of sex, 

pressed together like 

pages of a spell with 

beginning and dissolution,

murky,

drinkable,

finished. 

Never mind 

anticipation,

reminisce. 

Here I am

wholly alone and 

regard you as 

my trellis.