Noisy gal

Poem: Listen to it or read it or watch me perform it or…do all three! YOLO.

All Rise

A moment of silence for all the selves
I’ve lost to time or inner wars. The one 
who was going to be a professor, a rabbi,
a magazine editor. The one who threw up 
in broad daylight: mortified, pregnant,
a plastic bag of orange puke tied and left 
on the curb. The one who walked away 
from college thinking we’d all still sleep
next door, cackling in a shared bathroom 
until the end of our days. The California one 
in sunglasses and jumpsuits; the one who 
donned a blonde wig on Halloween, hoping 
she’d fool everyone, though she only fooled 
herself. The one who wrote daily poems 
in Brooklyn to remember how she lived 
when she was with the people she couldn’t
imagine living without, but somehow did. 
The one who believed one person could hold 
everything, who believed a person could go
through life without enacting any harm, who 
thought of only one person for so many days
their name was like a snake eye that never 
blinked. The one who didn't believe death 
would come for the beautiful ones. The one 
committed briefly to outfit notes, morning 
yoga, a daily spiffing of the desk. The one 
who sold milking systems to dairy farmers.
And all the waitress ones, too: the Cape Cod 
stoner, the lunch shift lady, the one who 
wouldn't call herself a waitress, who served 
cocktails overlooking the Hudson, dreaming 
of the train she'd take to the city where the boy 
she’d nearly kissed threw his arm around her 
like an owned thing. The woman who wore 
white go-go boots in all weather. The one who 
wanted to write somebody else’s poems, 
instead of her own, who drove cross country 
for poetry, who squinted, scanned, and scoured 
for someone’s choices she could follow 
to a T. The girl who wore shirts with words 
on them, and the girl who tied a silk scarf 
across her chest, called that a shirt. The one 
who lived, briefly, for the weekly recap of a bad 
television show, who got everything done 
thanks to a single saving song, who thought 
she could learn to look clean on short notice, 
thought she could show up at a wedding on time 
with the right kind of shoes, could arrive at her 
own atrocities and have something to say.

	(And to the selves who remain with me, 
	who never age or drain of power—the selfish 
	self, the sleepy self, the one forever heavy 
	with hunger; the dishwashing daydreamer, 
	the one who expects more than what comes,
	the one who longs to be known, known deeper, 
	seen fully, seen in darkness, lauded annually  
	by candlelight by her storied fans & beloveds—
	I raise no glass to you. To the self who covets 
	all the love and then more, who expects 
	what she doles out to return in kind—she’s still 
	with us, no need to light her yarzheit, she’s 
	megaphone, lit as the summer solstice, sits 
	like a New York pretzel on the couch, knows
	exactly where her wounds are and presses 
	on them herself—she’s got one whiskey 
	on the rocks and another on the way, no need 
	to boost this beast, she’s living noise.)

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Regarding the above poem: I was talking with a friend about the use of silence in literature and was inspired to write a poem exploring the concept of silence in my own life.

But what I ended up writing was a poem about all the (loud) people I’ve been. And the (loud) person I still am. Stay tuned for my future attempts to STFU!

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What I’m Reading/Just Read: I read less in the summer when I’m so physically tired from farming, but I did recently tear through my current ladyfam book club pick (Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus) and now I’ll get back to The Love Songs of W.E.B. DuBois by Honorée Fannone Jeffers, which I started and can’t wait to get more deeply into (I love big books).

I also just started Big Swiss by Jen Beagin (sounds SO fun) because I am a person who pretends she has time to read even when she is only getting tiny pockets of reading time, like 15 minutes during bath time and 20 minutes after farming/before dinner (dirty face, gin drink, Adirondack chair). Linden recently told a friend of mine (while I wasn’t around), “My mom loves to read. She even sometimes reads while she’s eating!” True fact, kiddo.

Saving Grace: The other night this song came on while I was making dinner and I turned it all the way up, yell-singing “I am the best rapper alive” as the onions went into the pan.

Video Content: I was part of a Poetry Month reading at the Hartland, VT library that was quite professionally filmed! You can watch it here (I come on around minute 49 and I read the poem in this email). There’s a Q&A at the end where I ramble, and what happened after the filming finished was many chats and tiny cupcakes and poems tied up in scrolls and smoking an herbal cigarette in the parking lot with Megan, laughing like the sisters that we are(n’t technically, but are in spirit).

Love you//mean it,
Taylor Mardis Katz Honeymeadow