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.)
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!
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
I had first heard this on the Hartland video, so it was great to read along this time. It's even better the second time round.
You rock. You rock. You rock.
I love these posts.