O wheat walls, bare as bread waiting to be broken.
I refuse. I will be happy. Won’t someone douse the room in champagne?
I slap on a holographic sticker and the sunlight smears, like jam.
The TA grading my manifesto says that I should tone it down. Damn right,
I say, who am I, to rage
as I gaze into the splendor of a rainbow of my own making.
Scratch that. I think I’ll just jump for fucking joy.
Because I brought up Yoko Ono again and my professor said, beautiful.
When doors swing shut behind me, they greet the frame
in a kiss.
Have you ever dreamed of kissing someone in the research stacks?
Nose stuck between the stubborn crack of an old pulp & that musty
paperback smell. Sorry to smother your pride
O freshman self, but sometimes I dream of kissing someone in the research stacks.
But I’ll settle for the kiss
of the latch on my door frame.
You can now enjoy privacy without maintenance a’knocking.
You haven’t had splinters in ages. Maintenance has forgotten your name.
Aren’t you kind? No. You are just not bothered.
In some translations, that means simply happy.
I started this poem in first person and started talking about
you. The age-old problem:
you, who I want to kiss, or who I want to be?
In poet-speak, you means I have not experienced this yet but want to write about it anyway.
Like I haven’t had my make-out session in between the critical essays on Delaney. Yet.
But I have danced in front of high schoolers to songs beyond our years.
One thing my siblings have taught me: high schoolers think they have an inferiority complex.
But really, they think they are better than everyone.
That’s because they’re not old enough for champagne.
I’m not old enough for champagne so people are telling me I should go to grad school.
Who cares? Time =
fake fake fake fake fake fake fake fake fake fake. Fake
is the time spent poring over job postings for middle school teachers
and thinking. If I were told what my mother was told, before
surviving, this is where I would want to be.
I am blessed that time does not matter.
My life can only be blessed with so many happy poems.
About jumping up and down on the first full-sized bed that was ever yours.
On a college town apartment on the tenth floor.
Dreaming you’d fall through each ceiling below you like like the clumsiest domino
or a clean fork through a hot stack of pancakes. What a time
to lap up the syrup and margarine.
I want to read this poem in a couple of years and think oh, baby.
O future self.
Don’t you wish you could come up with this shit?
I want to gaslight myself after my corporate desk job into thinking I once had it made.
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