I Am Not a Poet

Because if I were one of the greats, I’d know what to do with all the excess in my body
I seared my thighs on my car seats 109 degrees and leather with the shortest dress I could find
do not really mix and I could not think of a clever way to describe
The way “fuck me” lept off of my tongue rough and deformed and hot
But did nothing to sooth the burn.

I can’t articulate my emotions unless I use a Taylor Swift lyric and speak a language
that makes my mom roll her eyes skyward and Taylor Swift apparently
Isn’t some great poet laureate anyway

the way a pen can tap a vein and drain my blood scares me
If I were to blot my insides out replace it all with ink and allow my words to be a tool
What will find its way onto the page?

don’t the great poets have something to say they live a life and can translate their age into words
they who are hunted by simile and lingering sounds and unknowable insurmountable grief.

                I am not a poet but I sat down to write
                                  for in this moment I am one of those greats
                                                 yet this poem ends like this wannabe will
                                                                               with a whimper not a wail
                                                                                 with a comma not a period
                                                                                     without my soul becoming lifted evermore

when I use my pen I can only create images for my own personal Rorschach test
I sketch lines and see pictures of waves and thunder clouds and maybe little kids writing
But actually it’s all just squiggles with no metaphors aching to be unearthed

No great shapes to haunt
No green light.
No white whale
No ravens
No fields of daffodils tossing their heads in the wind

I am no mad woman in the attic
             I am not stuck watching clocks refuse to tick
                               My pockets aren’t big enough to fit rocks
                                                          and rivers aren’t deep enough
                                                             to cover my face or smother my shame

I don’t know how to personify the fights and love
that exist in the space between semi fraternal twin girls
or the paradox of being both older and younger than my dead sister

if I search too hard in the books in the lines written before me
a metaphor will settle around my neck settle its fangs in deep
unzip my flesh crack open my ribs consume me whole

I am terrified of taking up space becoming bigger than my body
apart of the sky rejected by those left on the ground

I sit in class surrounded by them and they don’t know I am full of shit
I listen to them speak try to pick up on some mundane inspiration
The closest to the divine I am likely to get

I could be a poet

but I have a feaux leather journal that’s mainly scribbles
             Instead of words.

I am too quick to weep and not nearly wise enough
             To sit with the urge to cry.

my anger grips its sharp talons around my tongue yanks until I cough up blood
              without pretty words flowing out.

the sweetest touch I have ever known exists only in my mind’s eye locked down deep
where even I cannot access it.                                   

I have no great opening line
                             I don’t think Death would deign to stop for me
                                   who do I have to compare to the temperate light of summer?
                                                nothing new under the sun just dead metaphor after dead metaphor
                                                                     perennial

I can’t hear the rhythm of words and I can’t pull out the hard
       sound of consonants and make them dance with the gentle vowels
across the page in even symmetrical shapes.

I am not a poet I am just a woman
But even that line is taken from a movie
because I don’t have the audacity
to reach inside and find something new

Peach Practice

He asks how I feel about juicy peaches
            and I wonder if he knows I am from Georgia

and grew up with sweet sticky juice fusing my fingers
            to one another, index to pointer to middle. I ask if that was a euphemism

but the conversation was originally about how I hate watermelon
            so maybe he doesn’t think about the double meanings

in food the way I am trained to. He says he wants to search
            for the taste of stone fruit at the back of my throat.

He wants to invade
            or perhaps begin an excavation.

His tongue as a torch,
            warming me from the inside out.

He says he has the lips of a singer
             and hands of an artist.

He says he could paint me like we’d soon die in the frosty Atlantic.
             I know I wouldn’t be offered a life boat

besides my body seems to call towards the water anyway,
              sensing freedom underneath

rough tides. I resist, I choose to float
               on his corpse and coast through the night dream of crisp sweets

That can be plucked
               from a cursed tree, bite them, feel hot poison

coat my throat, spill out the corners of my mouth,
               onto my chest, paint my torso,

seep between my legs
               make tacky my thighs.

He wants to grip my neck, calloused hands chafing
                as they squeeze, pale fingers wind tight,

I tell him no.
                Again making meaning he can’t.

He asks if he can follow the trail of juice
                craving knowledge, do I taste just as sweet?

There is a proper way to gorge
                on the flesh of a ripe peach:

press the thumb into the side, nails pierce
                then peel back the skin,

tongue gentle,
                hold against the cheek

consumption
                without bruising

I tell him I can teach him how to use soft hands
                to pluck and I will allow him to bite,

                     just to see if I have a cold hard pit in the center
                                 waiting to crack open his teeth