Dream of Relevancy

Everyone knows
what their life should be
and also that it isn’t

I watched a video of a woman
saying money was a river
and another video of a man
saying money was the devil

He was weeping and spitting

Which is more true?

You have a new notification
from your most familiar sky
It’s over the town you grew up in
It wants you to come back

No one wants to be reminded
of what the world really is

There’s a canyon
or there’s an abyss

You’re walking on the rim of it
or you’re down at the bottom
taking photographs of the sky

At my family reunion an aunt
took my palm and told me
I had no emotion
I would have five children
including miscarriages

I am an artist
and so embarrassed

to be down at the ocean
like this / weeping
and spitting

Feeling anything
about it at all

 

 

Poems

For years I hated reading poems
and mostly I still do
They hurt my feelings
with how little they care
to fuck with me

You can not accept
all the poems in poetry

Lots of berries
are poison / or worthless

I don’t think poetry
is even poetry anymore

It is cutting the ribbon
of its identity / over and over
Or addressing a venture capitalist
Or talking to the world

When I talk to the world
I sound like an asshole

When I wake up
I try to go outside immediately

I have a blueberry bush in my yard
I feel angry every day

I used to care
that the world liked poetry
but the world is already a poem
that I don’t want to read

It’s about the blooms and starts
of perceived abundance

It doesn’t want to talk to you

But I do

 

 

Dream of Geography

We were walking through the woods
on a wide path

I was brushing for ticks
That’s what you do out here

It was a scrubgrass place
but lush and green

Like all of America
It absorbed my projections

that it had been waiting for me
this whole time

I had no need of death
and the spring creek burned my feet

It helped to think of everyone
as an animal

I hoped that none of my desires
would intervene

I thought
I should really thank someone

but so many of my thoughts
are pulled from my mind

almost instantly
like by a wind

 

 

 

 

***

KELLY SCHIRMANN is the author of Popular Music (Black Ocean, 2016). She lives in the Pacific Northwest, and at kellyschirmann.com

 Art by Mallory Whitten.