Poem of the Month

Enueg 29

I think about Bukowski
vomiting out half-god poetry
and calling it the rallying cry
and saying that the new poetry
doesn’t feel good, doesn’t feel like poetry
doesn’t have substance, like a hot steaming shit
I don’t care. I don’t care anymore.
These years since college have done something to me.
I didn’t even realize, but I’m trying to turn myself
into a safe idea,

with my writing blog, and how little I push
at the edges, but I am surrounded
by moles
and they think I’m a daisy

oh god, is it supposed to be like this?
to be 29 and not looking anymore, not for men
or work, or rainbows or Heideggar
but just turning silent, like stone inside
just breathing so shallow
and not able to want the past
nor the future, just certain
there will be too many worlds you must
be just on the tip of
the ikea world
and the furnished living room
world and the kids eating their
sandwiches world and the easy to understand
world
that is not actually easy, but appears easy,
because it is loud
and the tv shows and commercials
and what that one poet said about how
everything we do is important
and I watched seven hours of tv today,
so this is shaping, heavily, who I am
what my life is

and god, there was supposed to be something
that came after that hell, after the depression
of those ten years, when the mind fully fused
and there was less falling into the abyss, and more
acceptance of the routines and responsibilities of
this nation, I thought there would be something
in the quiet after that, I thought it would mean
I had gotten somewhere.
but when the storms ended,
I saw that what they had blurred out was
this great unmoving silence, that throbs in long
meters and is like the confused ghost looking back
at her body in the snow.

-Nina Alvarez