I'm listening to the Paste Culture Club podcast and looking hopelessly at my very-disheveled room. My mother will have her first heart attack if I don't finish cleaning this mess of a bedroom by morning, but for now I feel a desire to blog.

Blog what, though? I might as well start with a poem.

I am not a literary exhibitionist.
the blood and soap that rinses off of my arms
do not collect into words and stanzas on the shower floor

My poetry is November.
it lands cold on my skin
but does not threaten danger like January ice.

I want to make poems so close to myself
that they glow from inside my skin like bright blue veins
I want to shake readers like my body under the force of sobs
I want to turn every literary journal that will have me into a girlie magazine
with a centerfold of my naked body
I want to make my emotions so loud you can read them!

I can't do poetic confessionals.
I write of stages and old men and things I feel no relation to
But I want so badly to write what I feel (and not what I know that I am good at writing)
that I bled through as much as ninety lesions every time I bathed for three years
and wrote words on my stomach and thighs with straight razors
in that way, maybe, I wrote lines that weren't so separate from myself
as every piece of writing I've ever done that I think is decent

but with scar cream being the price that it is
I've made too much of an investment to take my words off of paper

but for once I want to smile and shake and cry and scream and laugh
not just for theatrics during these public readings
but because I can't help it, I feel the art too deeply
I would give half my talent in verse to make my words
show the love that I feel!


I started working at Dunkin Donuts last week. My new job is very different than any that I have had before. Before making lattes and asking people what Munchkins they wanted, I had been editor-in-chief of my school newspaper, and the year before that, a staff writer for the same paper. That's it for paid jobs.

Now, instead of doing intellectual work without registers, or rushing, or customer service, I'm doing a job that I wasn't made for. I love it. It's difficult, but it's a rush. I'm using a different sort of skill set than I've ever even pondered before.

Thank you to @vinylart for getting me a few new readers. No one's commented yet (but I know that you're there! Google Reader doesn't lie) so please comment so I can give you a proper thank you.