Let He Who Has Never Accidentally Klarna'd an Impossible Whopper Cast the First Stone, Or, An Announcement

It was actually a PayPal Pay-in-4 plan, not Klarna, but that's not as catchy. I was putting a pick-up order in in a rush on my phone and hit the wrong button. So sue me! Just not for $2.75 on November 18th, November 25th, or December 2nd, please. I will owe Burger King money on those days and I cannot afford the court fees.

Anyway, this is as good a time as ever to announce that I have begun my tenure as the James Hearst Writer-in-Residence. For the next year, I will get to work on my in-progress manuscript right from Hearst's desk, and more importantly, will have the chance to get out in the community and yap about/teach some poems.

I have admired the work of farmer-poet, James Hearst ever since I moved to the Cedar Valley region of Iowa, his home, 10 years ago, and began familiarizing myself with his story and his poetry. As a writer from a working-class background, I admire the proletarianism in his writing, as well as his nuanced representation of disability, and his wonder for the mundane. As a young reader still finding my taste in poetry and trying to find a place for myself, Hearst's work always felt like an invitation to a table I didn't always feel welcome at.

I moved here in 2016 for college after having dropped out a couple years prior. Specifically, I came here with the pretty singular desire to study and write poetry, and I did so during a time in my life where it did not seem particularly practical to spend a bunch of money on studying and writing poetry. But it was also a time where I really had nothing else going on in my present and even less going in my future, so what else was there to do but throw some chips down, really. Making that decision has enabled me to build a life that is so much nicer and softer than I would have thought possible 10 years ago, as a Strange Little Feral Animal With Unresolved Trauma. Right away The Hearst was a landing place that really helped me find my voice as a young writer, so this all feels really nicely full-circle. I am so thankful for their wonderful staff for their support over the years and the work they do for our community, and I am so excited to continue working with them. I have a lot of big plans for the year ahead, and I look forward to sharing more on all of that as it comes up. I'll still also be writing about Snoopy and Chicken Run and all of that, too, don't worry. But for my first poem written at the desk of James Hearst is a little bit of reflection on 10 years of trying to figure out poetry and 10 years of more actively trying to be alive–two things that I think really go hand in hand. Hope you enjoy!

Wellbutrin In My Egg Nog 

The morning becomes strings of my own shredded nerves

hanging like Christmas lights around my neck

like jewelry, like a hand like a tied--anyway, I flicker. I wave placid

on the wind and that could have meant so many things that it 

somehow didn’t. 10 years ago I made my first conscious 

effort to stay alive. I had limestone eyes, and I sold them to the first bidder.

My stutter revived, louder this time, a clipped-wing phoenix rising out of ashes I 

had forgotten about entirely. I’m trying to tell you maybe 

things are better now, but I know they don’t have to be.

Every midnight I make a blood oath with the Tazmanian Devil 

stuffed animal I keep on my desk. I spin and spin 

like a tornado until the plush bears witness 

to my unraveling, like it bore witness to my grandfather’s 

after I gifted it to him, a month before his passing. No one

tells you that what you give might come back to you. Or maybe they do. 

But usually, it’s a good thing. My injured shoulder tightens my spine 

and my aches come alive in the night. By morning, 

I’m cursing my tossing and turning. I am deciding this 

is a body I would like to protect, but everything I need 

to protect it from keeps changing. 10 years ago

I bought a microphone and listened to myself, 10 years ago I smashed a guitar 

outside of the Grand Opera House and gave myself a bloody nose. 

I slept on bare bed springs, in flooded cornfields, 

probably on your couch. I became the nicotine stains on

your ceiling. The roof never caved in, but I shouldn’t have tested it. 

I’m sorry. I threw my head at walls, and paid no mind to the splatter, to the holes.

I shouldn’t have lost me like that. I’m sorry. I held the hands the rock throwers

hid from me. I shouldn’t have forgiven them. I’ll never 

run out of things to apologize for. I’ve been reminding myself 

that redemption is a construct, that meaning is a prison. these poems are not

lotuses. these poems are shards of boulders, if we’re lucky, they might form

a new acheron river. I feel pretty lucky these days. there’s evidence 

to the contrary, but I have decent insurance and a scalpel. a framed one-way ticket

and a chip on my shoulder. I can create myself. Yesterday, I celebrated a paycheck

with my first egg nog carton of the season. This morning, I washed down my

Wellbutrin with it, and as I chugged directly from the cardboard, the pill escaped

my mouth and sunk right into an ocean of egg and milk. I can’t fish it out. my

reward dissolves my pulse, my mania, like a snake eating its own tail, like blood

dissolving on the Tazmanian Devil’s plastic teeth. like this poem dissolving from

our memory, like our memories dissolving into poem. the oak tree’s shadow is split

down the middle under tonight’s moon. there are so many ways to speak to the

dead without joining them.