Stephanie Young
2 Poems
Weather with You
There were thoughts I couldn’t bear to have
unless my eyes were covered with ice.
Then, in the grip of duplicating specters, my head
partially frozen solid under a bag of peas
couldn’t stop to think the bad thought’s coming
with greasy bangs. It thinks itself. I realize
opening night along with birds
flying too close to one’s head
without even being cinematic. Being slight. Being
slighted. The trouble I get into
is always in the field of partial contact
so in lieu of falling again I thought to close up.
With the exception of hitting my shin
on the same shin I was trying to walk with, I tripped
and fell before I could stop falling. Tears, if there were
lay scattered across my cheeks
fixed as diamonds in the photograph.
Each stone set in a delicate phrase
and violently revolving. A red bag
disappears around the corner on the shoulder of a girl I used to love
but I refuse its medication. Watch without watching
the clouds gather around my waist. The line
can’t go on hyperventilating
and must remain somewhere behind me
with its head in a paper bag.
A thunderstorm above my torso
holds the boat in place.
Sonnet for Saint Valentine
I began to think
I must pay more attention to the museum.
More precise. More colorful, so that
you’d want to live there. What proof
the nutcracker ever was, or the tool
for extracting crab and lobster, history shows
that the people in this museum
once dined exclusively on nutmeats.
I labor to inject the scene with fat.
Plump the lips on the bed.
Here’s a white Belgian carrot.
What did you bring?I tried to stop thinking.
That was the point of new music.