Eva Moe

Category: poetry

  • From the Notebook: I am selfish 

  • From the Notebook: King Arthur was a Tragedy

    “In the age of romance and chivalry, steam seeped through open hearts now it’s a gas leak up the nose and on fire. Love is now combustible. Love is now the library. Love is now the golden gilded spine of ancient text.

    July 1st 2017.”

    like: “love is now the library”
    dislike: “ancient text”

    Here’s the new version. As you can see, I’ve added a title and altered the imagery. This poem did not undergo a heavy edit, and that’s okay. Sometimes, I write a long poem only to keep one or two lines, or images, or ideas. Other times, like in this case, I keep it mostly the same.

    King Arthur was a Tragedy
    In the age of romance and chivalry
    steam seeped through open hearts
    now it’s a gas leak.
    Up the nose.
    On fire.

    Love is now combustible.
    Love is now the library.
    Love is now the golden
    gilded spine of mildew books
    that bury in your head
    songs and hatchets alike.

    Eva

  • Nancy’s Song

  • A.E. Housman notebook poem

    It’s been a while since I wrote here and I’ll tell you why. JOBS. Two of them.

    This is newly written, and like my earlier stream of consciousness poem, I took a whole page and threw out some words.

    here’s a legible version:

    I to my perils
    came not like A.E. Housman
    clad in armor by stars benign.
    I swam to them in my PJs
    water logged, hair kinked
    and trouble was a bonfire.
    I was the mosquito and the jet was my blood meal.
    Whoever shaved before 8th grade wished too hard for time to pass
    and passing is the great curse and gift of prickly knees.
    I dragged myself through marshes by tufts of leg hair
    to which I gleamed a shining eye to Hope
    I’d not trifle with a fleeting love
    or mad money and me, the poet,
    the victim of my own desires.
    If I was a better friend, the last line
    would have been my own design.

  • My 12 Steps for Poetry Writing

    Below is a stream of consciousness poem I wrote an hour ago. Lots of imagery potential here! Today I thought I’d share how I usually approach poem writing.

    1. Write rough cut in pen or marker
    2. Run away from it! It needs time to rest.
    3. Look at it with an unbiased mind
    4. Say “hey this isn’t so bad”
    5. Say “except this right here is awful”
    6. Subtract
    7. Run away again
    8. Read it aloud
    9. Fine tune
    10. Publish or
    11. Put it away until I run out of ideas
    12. Return when I’m a better writer and revise

  • Don’t Look Inward Whatever You Do

    Don’t Look Inward Whatever You Do
    Doug said to look inward
    but it’s winter there.
    He doesn’t know I can swallow a whole snowman
    and my belly stays fat until I go to the equator.

    The doctor put a stethoscope on my chest and said
    she heard a black hole purring.
    I worry science doesn’t know whether
    one comes back from that.

    Who knew Dr. L was also a court stenographer?
    She said Quiet Let Me Dictate
    I said Sure and heard
    “I know you in the black.
    In the caves between pixelated dreams
    I can steal you anytime”
    I said Shit Doc What Do I Do
    and she was like
    “don’t call me Doc”
    so I said, “just tell me how to fix this”
    and she hypothesized
    “if the core of your persona grows in a terrarium
    you should drink 3 buckets of water a day for a week to drown any evil roots”
    I don’t know where she got “terrarium” but long story short
    NASA’s bringing me down to Huntsville, Alabama on Thursday
    which is very far away from Doug.

  • College

    College

    The buttons on my blender told me
    Crush. Grind. Pulverize.
    I stuck my mind in and pressed all three.

    I left the lid off, can you imagine
    the kitchen ceiling?
    My clothes splattered with essays

    Essays splattered with me
    My roommates gave me the short straw
    and told me to suck it up.

    Remember in elementary when health teachers
    stuck coffee straws in your lips and said
    “that’s what it’s like to be a smoker”?

    Then you went to recess for the black lungs
    and mourned the loss of their monkey bar callouses.
    You hoped they could make it up the stairs.

    Then you went to college and wished you were still
    the swinging champion of your grade school
    but every time you test it, voltage shakes your ankles

    When you die they’re gonna put you on a big ole sling shot
    They’re gonna pull you back, aim
    and shoot your body into quicksand

    where you will sink and drown. It will be so shitty
    that the lightning buildup in your legs will flip the switch to your brain
    You’ll open your eyes (you dummy!) and kick your feet

    like a dolphin you’ll shoot straight up from the surface.
    Summer air will suck the sand from your nostrils like sugar,
    and a classmate will ask for an extra pencil.

  • The Red Dawn | La Madrugada Roja quickwrite

    I’m sorry but I can’t write a poem for you. There was nothing beautiful about your death I wasn’t even there, I heard about it on Snapchat when our buds were at your wake & thought how fuckin lame is my relationship with my friends that I’m the last to know & then I thought you’d give me a big ole smack of words, you destroyer, for making your absence about me. I can’t write about it, I’m sorry. Every literary device I throw down sits in my mouth like raw garlic & nothin’s sweet or sour, Madrugada. What’d you do when they told ya? look in the mirror & tell your brain “you bastard”? look at your hands & wish they could fish hook it out of your skull like a scab? Did you deny your body’s betrayal or did you find it consistent? I can’t put it together. You know when the chemistry teacher says a gas will expand to fit its container? It’s just like that. All I wanna do is turn these poetic particles into liquid so at least they’d flow like the rushing stream of your memory but I’m all dried up. All I could do was pour Bacardi down the sink, I gave you two shots but didn’t tell because my roommate was callous and would hound me for wasting alcohol. I thought about you in Malaysia during a sunrise & spoke your name, La Madrugada Roja. You died seven months ago but this is the best I could do.

  • Zine Pages: April 15th, 2017

    Two pages of a zine I created today.

    Blackout poetry&
    Drawing&
    Collage

    SCN_0001

  • Honey

    you only commit to illusions like me
    pulling fists from my pockets
    but they’re bees
    in your stomach

    your mouth is full with the honey of my language
    yes, it’s Crimson and Clover
    dripping over and over

    you ran up the alp to whip your heart in shape
    but worked too hard
    it’s over zealous

    you caught a bird in your hands
    who flew you south for the winter
    now your blood’s with the crows
    and you’ll never learn my syntax