Less Poem, More Garf: RIP to Summer 2026

Hello, and welcome back to Stupid Poetry! After taking the summer off, I have returned to my outpost (out-poem-st?) with a dang brand new poem, and some other ramblings. I decided to take the summer off from writing due to that classic dilemma of Life Rocking My Shit over and over again this calendar year.

Ostensibly, at least, I am a trauma writer. I would like to not be that some day—I would like to focus a lot more on Wallace and Gromit—but I have a backlog of poems about horrible things to work through first, so here we are. I usually like it fine. What else are ya gonna do with the horrors. They’re there already. Turning Bad Things into Art or (whatever you wanna call it), feels particularly exhausting to do, though, when more Bad Things are happening. So I took a little summer vacation from writing poems, mos

So what did you do??? you’re probably asking yourself. You’re probably hitting your head on a desk right now yelling, what in the hell did that guy who writes poems sometimes that show up in my Gmail box on phone do this summer?!!! Where poems go????? I apologize for putting you in this position. But honestly, the answer is kind of just Not All That Much. Which was ultimately good, probably. I think I had a midlife crisis, or continued whatever month-long midlife crisis that was already going on. I’m 31, so maybe I should say quarter-life crisis, but ehh, let’s be honest.

It wasn’t all bad. I got to do a handful of really fun readings and met some wonderful folks across the state of Iowa. I got back into the habit of playing and making music. I was the best man in a wedding. I dyed my hair some pretty colors again. I’ve been wanting to try my hand at digital illustration for awhile now, so I got an iPad and started scribbling a bunch of dumb little guys. I met Grimace this past weekend at my town’s Pridefest. What more could you ask for?

I could ask for The Horrors to end, I suppose, but, again, let’s be honest, it’s not happening. And so the other thing I spent most of this summer doing is trying to come to terms with them. And trying to figure out how to do that outside of poetry. As I’m sure I’ve rambled about before, I am incredibly glad and fortunate to have had poetry as a mechanism through which I could sort out my bad and mangled brain. Plainly, I don’t think I would be alive otherwise. But as grateful as I am to have had poetry as that salve, I have recently struggled with the re-living that can happen while writing trauma poems if you’re not careful. I know it sounds really fun, but it’s not always the best for your Mental Help (sic).

I spent the summer trying to figure out how to let myself detach from survival mechanisms that don’t make sense anymore. And it made me consider what my poetry, or what my life, could be like if I didn’t have it so wrapped up in this permanent defensive pose. What if a poem was a poem and not a ticket to a scholarship or a grant? What if the art that proves my survival isn’t also always about my survival? What if poetry doesn’t have to save my life anymore? Shouldn’t it, shouldn’t I, get to do something else? I could stand to take the world in better faith, even when it doesn’t make sense to. It sucks real shit, but what’s the alternative? The poem I have down below all these non-poem words today is about all that, I think.

Before that, I do want to just give y’all my top 5 movies of the summer. In addition to the Quiet Contemplation of My Life and Many Mistakes, I’ve also been watching a lot of movies the last few months in my quest to become the Most Annoying Guy on letterboxd (find me at ‘sethillous’ on there if you dare). Capital C Cinema has been a vital part of my summers my whole life since I was a child going to see Wild Hogs (2006) by myself in an empty theater. So here are my top 5 films I watched in Summer ‘26.

The Stupid Poetry Top 5: Summer 2k26

1. Garfield’s Babes and Bullets (that’s right, I go ascending.)

Now this one has it all. Garfield, Babes, Bullets. Picture this, that crazy little lasagna loving cat guy walkin’ around in a little trench coat and a fedora like he’s in a dang Mickey Spillane novel. What more can you want? Inspired performance from Lorenzo Music.

2. Here Comes Garfield

I mean what else can I say? here he comes. Inspired performance from Lorenzo Music

3. Garfield’s Thanksgiving

Jon coerces Liz into a date by holding his breath and also the first date is Thanksgiving dinner with his grandmother. He is a bad man, but he gets what he deserves. It’s twisted, and hell I know it’s the wrong time of year, but it goes places I never expected it to. It’s damn good. Inspired performance from Lorenzo Music.

4. Good Will Hunting

I think I had seen this but I don’t actually know if I did or if it’s just so saturated in culture that I thought I did. That boy is Wicked Smaht!!! Underrated funny movie title too imo. I cried a bunch.

5. The Devil Wears Prada 2

It was fine; I had a good time. I didn’t see the first one til the night before. Honestly though, I’m mostly including it because it feels weird to not include any actual new movies and I am realizing this is the only one I saw. But if I was being honest it would probably be Garfield in the Rough. Which is carried by an inspired performance from Lorenzo Music.

Alright, bye—here’s that poem I was talking about. It’s sad. Sorry.

iowa nice at summer's end

A season of loss, of humidity's weight locked in place on the backs of each carnival light's dismembered spirit. the clouds are dense and low. each ferris wheel rotation tears an ocean out of the wisps, it sends the shreds of stray balloon animals back to the ground, their corpses carrying pieces of sky to gift us. my friend paul packs their share into a white owl and I bury mine in the dirt outside the demo derby track. I thought I could plant my smoky sunsets, grow something brighter, something fresher. I returned 20 years later and learned I was wrong. motor oil and metal scraps, sunflowers mowed down for county fair parking. I wasted every day waiting for piss-soaked floors to open up, to drop me into an air-conditioned chamber where every wall is bare and every bill I’ve blown on a double shot to my memory is hidden under the couch cushions. every heart ache was a waste of ammonia. every stare was a diagnosis. every deathwish was a dream for a cure. Do you have an image of me in your head? I don’t mean to put you on the spot. it’s not what you think. I ask as a starving man asks for food, like I’m begging for the water I’ll never find in the desert. I don’t need to know what you think of me. I just need to know I’m here, so every fourth of july I brand myself with sparklers. every august I peel the dead skin and let it clog the shower drain. There’s nowhere for all these dead years, burnt tongues, bad bones, to go. Ive been thinking I may have scoliosis but it may just be that the weight of fish fly nights spent in strangers cars in casino parking lots rests unevenly across my shoulders now, or maybe yet rests not at all. 10 years ago I looked for Pokémon at the riverwalk, drunk at 3 am, with a bomb in my mouth I ċouldnt diffuse. My blood was all borrowed bottles, broken and buried in my eye socket like the bad hangover I became. 12 hour graveyard shifts at the gas station punctuated my discontent, Dubuque night skies cloaked the freedom of youth in sore ankles, heart murmurs, missed car payments. When I had nowhere to go I drove through the morning. I never covered much ground. I’d stand on the roof of my Taurus on top of the Cleveland park bluff, and I’d count the gold plates on the court house roof, gaze and fantasize about what I could sell them for. I didn’t realize I ever had shine to be stolen, and by the time I couldn’t see me, it had all been sold. I wish I loved myself when I was all I had. In another life maybe. as another summer becomes your last, for now, the garter snakes under the porch eat their tails. i count the ashes in a communal urn one by one and pray the souls it holds approve of the color glaze I picked out for them. i run in circles, I lay in the grass one last time, i count the chips in my teeth, on my shoulder. i wait for my sweat to crystallize. do you hear my old voice humming FM hymns in the prairie wind? i don’t and i wish i did. there are so many apologies in this dirt. there is so much ill never forgive.