January, mouthing words, blinking.
[for Disney Princesses]
You’re some quirky protégé, four sizes of yellow bloom, numbers, active experience, a
show January.
Where the folk project eventually grows colder, buoyant, extends frequent thorns to
that zone of man.
A gallon of antique rainwater—love that blue—taken and finalized, jump of cult
mediation, intoxicated, yelling.
Quickly, I could be more immaculate, though. Some fresh perspective survived—just a
warmer battery. Except I realized:
Lush plants grow half an inch from privacy, your quality amazing—six words filling a
nightclub, a jump, a rock.
Gardens could not be more pink. Thrown roses, a junkie. Several herbs grow in baskets,
finalized and antique. Mixes.
Real green is the next celebration. Lush natives, quality jasmine, waves more than
heaven along a risk of flood zones.
A year ago this cult was a canvas. Exist, always on a cushion. Bloom for just one
citizen. Don’t ask questions.
Every project extends sweet cactuses, agave. Reflect frequently: Sweet youth, blue
zones, mother rock.
Just shut off the automated daughter. Bloom. Wave. Seduce. Size. Your therapist says
recharge quickly, exactly.
It’s so terrible: you party enough to know great good. This zone of jasmine: Swim in
every antique extension.
You bought a Toyota Corolla. Fill it with six quirky human compositions, loving. Today
is just amazing.
I realize that eventually horrible experience can love. The journey can act wider,
quickly. I felt a zone of folk in my guitar.
You reinvent antique energy, exceed the tenor of each jump, hear a delicate heart
climb, an amazing ukulele in water.
It’s quirky, what good pink youth risks: flooding, amazing swaths of parking lot tax.
I could just buy living.
I am an antique. I am a folk party, a zone of invention, a jump, an act hanging purple.
Next, moved: a wave of blue.
This is a found poem. The following articles were used for source material:
Baldor, Lolita C. “Military Suicides up Just among Reserves.” Austin American-Statesman [Washington] 26 Apr. 2014: A1+. Print.
Barnes, Michael. “The Pied Piper of Ukulele Players.” Austin American-Statesman 26 Apr. 2014: E1+. Print.
Osborn, Claire. “Lawsuit: Police Left Man Paralyzed.” Austin American-Statesman [Round Rock] 26 Apr. 2014: B1+. Print.
Toohey, Marty. “City Officials Propose Buyout of 443 Houses.” Austin American-Statesman 26 Apr. 2014: A1+. Print.
Villalpando, Nicole. “Take a Tour of the Masters.” Austin American-Statesman 26 Apr. 2014: E1+. Print.
I have no doubt
No one dreamed, at least I didn’t
the way we were supposed to.
You start the year wondering,
playing the gauntlet that we just played.
trying to crawl up the side.
Which is why, obviously, we are worried.
(His face was pushed up on the screen;
she couldn’t breathe, and was begging and begging
to slow down momentum,
to see the touches.)
We can keep searching for quite some time to come:
They just need a place to to rest
across the city
We will attract our kind of music,
because, like grief, the thing we cannot see
is a promise
a full mosaic
worth the headache that I have.
We’ve been splintering a little bit.
I’m walking away with
the center of town
without addressing the quality of existing
It sucked the air right out of the room
and said, I’ll be OK.
This is a found poem. The following articles were used for source material:
Pear, Robert. “Sign-up surge swamps health site.” Austin American-Statesman [Washington] 1 Apr. 2014: A1-A5. Print.
Taboada, Melissa B. “School boss hunt may take awhile.” Austin American-Statesman. 1 Apr. 2014: A1-A4. Print.
Coppola, Sarah. “Will micro units mean lower housing costs?” Austin American-Statesman 1 Apr. 2014: A1-A4. Print.
Associated Press. “Firefighter rescues python from blaze.” Austin American-Statesman [Muskegon, Mich.] 1 Apr. 2014: A2. Print.
Associated Press. “Russia pulls battalion from Ukraine border.” Austin American-Statesman [Simferopol, Crimea.] 1 Apr. 2014: A3. Print.
Semple, Kirk and Michelle Innis. “Countries to stick with search for jet.” Austin American-Statesman. 1 Apr. 2014: A8. Print.
Marchione, Marilynn. “Study: Weight-loss surgery defeating diabetes.” Austin American-Statesman. 1 Apr. 2014: A8. Print.
Lozano, Juan A. “Woman stabbed beau to death with high heel.” Austin American-Statesman [Houston.] 1 Apr. 2014: A2-B3. Print.
Dinges, Gary. “Restaurants courted for Sixth Street site.” Austin American-Statesman. 1 Apr. 2014: B5-B6. Print.
Feinberg, Doug. “Notre Dame ousts Baylor.” Austin American-Statesman. 1 Apr. 2014: C1-C2. Print.
Madsen, Tammy. “3-guard system working well.” Austin American-Statesman. 1 Apr. 2014: C3. Print.
Blackstock, Peter. “Record label balences old, new.” Austin American-Statesman. 1 Apr. 2014: D1-D3. Print.
E. Kristin Anderson is author of seven chapbooks of poetry including A Guide for the Practical Abductee (Red Bird Chapbooks 2014) Pray, Pray, Pray: Poems I wrote to Prince in the middle of the night (Porkbelly Press, 2015), Fire in the Sky (Grey Book Press 2016), She Witnesses (dancing girl press, 2016) and We’re Doing Witchcraft (Hermeneutic Chaos Press, 2016). Anderson’s nonfiction anthology, Dear Teen Me, was published in 2012 by Zest Books (distributed by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) and her next anthologies, Hysteria: Writing the Female Body and Come As You Are (a 90s pop culture anthology) are forthcoming. Her poems have appeared in many magazines—including Barrelhouse Online, Nashville Review, American Journal of Nursing, and Asimov’s Science Fiction. She grew up in Maine, lives in Austin, Texas, and occasionally blogs at EKristinAnderson.com.