You should know the context of how I came about writing this, though. It was one day last spring when I was writing a paper, then decided it’d be best if I drove down the University of Chicago, just to see what it was like– the ivy and the sidewalks and the kids. Part of my ever evolving method of perverse procrastination. Now I kinda like it (after I cut half of the bullshit out).
Here we go:
I lost my voice, And I’m going to get it back. With my heels cocked and my legs tense,
I stretch my neck straight and long,
part my lips, stretched them wide,
clench my fingers, my knuckles, my palm,
and I thrust a fist into my mouth.
I go past my teeth, past my jaw,
plunged down to my throat,
and felt a lump, stuck.
Fondling its flesh slimmed with fluid
I feel its pulse, pinched and slow.
I slide a finger past its mass
to hook the blob and tear it out.
That blood, that muscle only slid down.
I can’t breath now. My arm, that girth,
blocks hacks from my lungs.
The hunk slides deeper now, deeper down.
I pulled out.
I know now that that lump will never leave.
It will throb, near burst, never fail.
My god, I gasp, in the dirt,
I can’t do this alone.
Will you try?
Z,
I congratulate you on your first time sharing a poem!
I really dug it… Nice rhythm and good use of verbs. I would explicate a lot more (or at all.. since the comment I made doesn’t qualify as an explication), but I think it might get too personal.. maybe we can talk about it sometime. I know well the time in which you wrote it… so I think I might understand it more because of that.
Wow were we two lost souls that summer… so much has changed, but at the same time not much at all… I mean you are going to be going to the University of Chicago and we are two people much happier with themselves and life… but, I don’t know, the lost-ness still pertains. I think it will for a long time to come, but that’s a good thing… we aren’t static people right!? We are dynamic… Ingrasci would approve.
I love you oh so much, Z Oleson!
K-