To the BART passenger, or someone similarI once scrawled on the chalkboard walls inside of my head thatTo the BART passenger, or someone similar by ~MeghanSills
I am a poem; I squeeze between the cyan lines of the college-ruled notebook
I dance on the black tip of a ballpoint pen, mad with indifference to the world of no. 2 pencils and fat pink erasers
I am the mistake crossed out with a double line; the first draft is the mad draft after all
I rejoice to the tune of misplaced apostrophes in the key of it's and mourn the death of the Oxford comma, for it once was my only friend (outside of parentheses)
I am the space between the brain and mouth: usually a collection of utter nonsense filtered out before we speak
I celebrate lost wo
I AmWide awake with the sound of Sylvia Plath's journals crowing and ca-cawing in my headI Am by ~MeghanSills
Lost in my lack of sleep, wondering when the train to Bellingham will finally arive
So worried about LORs that I would much rather think that means Lord of the Rings than
what I really meant in the first place
The culmination of postmodernists crammed into my left ear, with only literary nonsense
left to learn from
Borrowing a form that doesn't make sense while writing a poem that most certainly does
Wishing I could be like e.e. cummings:
u (sing punctuation) in all the wrong places
at exactly the right times
AND ONLY CAPIT
20 Projects for Jim SimmermanHer hair is a block of charred concrete20 Projects for Jim Simmerman by ~MeghanSills
leading me through maple side streets
Sun glares off the window panes and
my palms burn on its stovetop
sizzling like a pepper hitting oil
The spice burns through my nostrils
and down past the last of my taste buds
Afternoon tastes like dry smoke
or a chiclet dropped by Jaime Novato
on the sand ten miles from Tijuana, Mexico
only we were really in San Ignacio
4,328 kilometers away
We ran from the homeless and toward
farms of money, the blood red sun
staining our arms along the way
Mi madre laughed at the bottoms of
bar
I am 42"I am 42,"I am 42 by ~MeghanSills
said the poet(man)
who did not go on to be
famous, well-known, or even
respected
just loved
and apparently that was enough
because he died with a smile
on his face and a dozen
roses in his clenched
fists
shaped like grenades
he had thrown twenty years
previous, hoping he
didn't kill anyone
because he was just
obeying orders
orders
screamed in ears
willing to listen as long
as he could interpret
and analyze later
on scraps of paper
Sta.sh
