Eva Moe

Tag: poem

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Tempe, Arizona

    Tempe, Arizona
    is the Oscars on a blowup bed,
    my dog saying No to the desert mountain,
    mystery mariachi slipping over a wall,
    drinking beer at the movies
    dining at a hot Mexican restaurant and the check
    insisting that friendship is expensive.
    Tempe is the place where you find out
    you are hotdish and your friends are sushi.

  • Yellow Amarillo

    Yellow Amarillo,
    I almost did not find you because of the sunset.
    That fucker took my eyes like a beak to marbles
    and the visor in the car? I slapped my face with it.
    Knocked the wraparound sunglasses clean off
    in a rush to see the road again
    but the sun spat “look at me, you ignorant swine”
    and I was like, “Amarillo?”

  • A Dollar Twenty

    A Dollar Twenty
    it’s 2017 and I owe the library a dollar twenty.
    I forgot four books at once
    but they don’t talk about it at the checkout.
    no “hey look it happens but if you don’t pay us back
    you’ll never read Stephen King in this town again.”
    Consider me a villain.
    Give me a franchise.

    Miss Sayonara and the Book of No Return
    and the reVIEWS, darling!
    Box Office Anti Hero Stuffs Two Dollars in Envelope
    Bloody Insignia Indicates Unstable Temperament
    Non-Returner Repents
    Book Bandit at it Again
    Library Seeks Revenge
    she owes a dollar fifty.

    That’s it? I’ll give you three.
    Take my dreams to the laundromat
    show me the muscles of your forearms         dry
    here’s the chipped yellow grass you can water with sepia tone
    dye this landscape burnt orange like those teeth in that Western
    read me the trash about galloping abs
    you want a dollar fifty?
    I raise you my space ship
    pirate ship         indigo baby dragon
    majestic brown horse         washboard nihilists
    will they won’t they modern friendship
    psycho brawler         dream thieves
    bank bullets        shooter boots
    a black cat         a salt circle
    a weather woman shoots rain from her eyes
    into the neck of a hipster
    and I return to you with these stories.

  • Omaha

    Grandma’s yellow raincoat makes me eerie
    like a liquor woman undercover
    like the man who waves back follow the leader.

    I want to hear the ocean boom from the belfry,
    a sonorous bell singing nine p.m.

    The town fell dark before I arrived
    so I forgot to fear the men
    this city gave me
    new air, wet tires

    My hometown shadow scales the tower
    I play the old game, follow the leader.
    The belfry plays nine thirty.

     

  • Road

    I’ve been on the road for two weeks without doing laundry anywhere but the sink.
    I brought a white flowy tunic specifically for Arizona.
    Now the cuffs are tan in Denver.
    my laptop clicks when it opens and I wince because I’ll need a new one,
    but I gave my money to the waiters in Tempe.
    I’m drinking Folgers in a borrowed mug,
    thinking about Minnesota.

  • Enemy Friend Request quick write 

    you taught me how to hate and for that I am eternally grateful
    I learned how to betray a good friend (you) without guilt
    for that I can only thank myself

    you saw me in the nightclub
    grabbed my shoulders
    said hello
    That night I also saw alien porn projected on the venue’s screen

    A haunted house and a 3 meter dick (old vacuum hose?)
    a feeble woman jogs away from whatever arts and crafts the production team got into

    I find myself near the Triple Rock where the slimy penis flopped around
    Somehow I think of you first.
    Dammit, woman.
    I cast you as Lifetime Arch Enemy & paid you in thoughts on a rolling basis
    Now I’m hiring.
    I wish you still thought my name was a curse
    you wrote such wonderfully horrific things about me.

  • Rubber Trees in Malaysia

    To me it looked like a regular young forest
    Liang said they’re Rubber Trees
    to be cut down on their fifth birthday
    i picture the entire forest falling down on the trampoline ground
    bouncing back into place
    a lumberjack’s nightmare

  • In Subplot, Seeking Help | From: Damsel Underwhelmed [poem]

    In Subplot, Seeking Help
    From: Damsel Underwhelmed

    Dear editor,
    all my poetry is about romance
    isn’t that totally gross?
    i mean, i run my phone down to 24% in a day
    for a notification or a gif or a meme
    with this that the other person’s charming face
    good god when comes the part where i don’t look for trouble, it finds me?

    and Wait there’s more, i have no blood
    i have no herbs to add in my tea
    i have no spellbound trickster leaves
    i have no flapping stomach bees
    i have this sexy actor meme

    i want to be the meanest woman and i want to be forgiven immediately.
    only one person can fall hopeless and it’s the guy in the produce aisle.