Welcome to The Rumpus’s National Poetry Month project. We’ll be running a new poem from a different poet each day for the month of April.
15 minutes
the beaming sun
sun
out there
resembles
a light bulb
the sun
is that bright
Ashville is on a mountain
of Crystal
that inspired me
I had to get out of there
fast
depending on who
uses it
anything
you make can
be broken
reset
I can hear the faint
pattern
in the water
falling on tin
or stainless
steel. Its ugly
little message
doesn’t annoy me
so much as make
me wonder
if it’s making
lines in the air
my coffee is so
black and that’s complete
and so I must
break it. I had
so much to say
today and yet I stretched
out. I thought “62.”
That’s 8. And Cathy
said today was
a full moon. It means
everything: how I turned
my hip on the slide
and almost hurt
myself. The tray that
sat in my mother’s
house forever
is on my counter
now. Useless and like
forever. Greedy about
time these fifteen
minutes. It begins nailing
the sink like
a rattle has a finale.
Rather than allowing
me to search Doug
gently cut me off.
And this is enough.
The check could’ve been
larger. I wanted you
to be charmed by
how she lived with the plants
and the clocks
in the house. My insane
devotion to my
mother. I will not call
her. To thank her
on this day, an 8. No
I am enjoying
my rattling coffee
the sound of the knife
its drips really slicing
time which is
sound as whole
as I know. I understand
my perfect love
for you and this
is apart from that too.
Coffee like a black
pen on my birthday
a sound that is making lines
a hand that will fill
them. I deposit
my check. I say
thank you mother.
Read the Rumpus Review of Eileen Myles’s Snowflake / different streets.
