Poetry and Sense of Selfie Collage by Katy Comber

Sonnet Attempt from a Distracted Mind By Katy Comber

It still churns in my mind. Sometimes. The ghost of you and Home and that salty sweet, “Why?” Peppered yolk runs. Easy eggs miss the toast. I nibble, swallow, throat dry, but still try

to rearrange that sloppy compartment of you: magnets, coupons, dust, and Joker card with its corner bent, lives free of rent in my mind. Hazed mental state. “You broke her.”

I found it. Cracked. Wrong time. The old wristwatch. There’s a whistling, a forgotten Kettle. Mind shifts, local report: Sighting! Sasquatch! I worry about long hair in nettle.

I shake my head. Press delete. Look to light. Wonder—if I need to say, I’m alright.

That Poetry Thing By Katy Comber

You ask if I still do that Poetry Thing.

I hear the question within the question: “Do you still do that Poetry Thing [about me/am I still fresh/is that time cut, preserved echoes clipped into verse all for me]?”

I nod. Keep the Thing to myself. Keep it all to myself:

How the last poem I will ever write, when my bones are close to dust and life and pen are agony to grip and grasp— how it won’t have a trace of you. How the vowels will be round and lovely; consonants constant, steadfast, support. How semicolons and ampersands will abound (not an m dash or parentheses in sight). How the lines will fill me up, hold me, & let me burrow deep into that rich language you were too poor to digest.

How years from now, I won’t remember you when Dylan’s Highlands play. Or around that tang of dill sharp against fat salmon, dark chocolate and almond, Malbec and Macbeth.

But you might think of me.

And wonder: If my laugh has altered. If my eyes still yearn, And. If I’m still doing That Poetry Thing.

“Sense of Selfie” A B&W Series by Katy Comber

Katy Comber co-founded Creative Light Factory nonprofit writers’ room, founded the website affinitycolabpresents.org, an online arts and lit magazine, and hosts a monthly Story Slam/Poetry Jam at Steel City Coffeehouse. Her works can be found in Dreamers Creative Writing; Studio B’s Wabi Sabi Anthology, Paragon Press’ Lagom Journal; Meat for Tea Literary Review, Affinity CoLab Presents, and an indie-published collection of poems now available on Amazon: 40 Portraits of a Family.