slump sophomore
p o e m s
b y
for eli coppola
“it’s the lack that I still love / the space between the punch and the pain that comes� told slant
the state of the university every time i go out all i see are people who call themselves woke being microaggressive. i am also probably one of those people and it’s shitty that i’m usually too drunk to remember each semester is a new round of the woke olympics the key to winning is understanding that wokeness isn’t a state but a process you can always be more woke but none of us ever win, the egos are always the victors admitting you fucked up doesn’t get likes on facebook being aware that the world doesn’t end at the limit of what you have experienced or understand doesn’t make it on the nescac story here’s a question: if someone says a truth you have no experiential context to relate it to you don’t A) try to relate it to something you do have experiential context for B) say “not all ‘insert oppressive majority’” C) claim that it is not a truth on the basis that you are the only one who can tell the truth and that is something you have not experienced to be true D) all of the above
if there’s one relevant thing i’ve learned at college it’s that the answer is always D, all of the above it’s good practice to shut up and listen in digital art we learned all about nondestructive editing in photoshop where you hide what you don’t want without deleting it just mask the pixels to give it the appearance of invisibility being a student at this university is being both the edited and the editor a pacifist soldier, aggressive passive aggression, gentle gentrification our core curriculum is violence; when i run into people i spoke to once during orientation i ask them how their first year seminar on denying you’re problematic went mine was on being part of the problem and i’m ashamed i got a really good grade when you hide pixels in photoshop the default color underneath is white and i wonder what that says about erasure about what it means to be called invisible mask out the mouths so no one can say otherwise paste in new mouths
to say things that will look good in the pamphlets i got hired at admissions because i can say I LOVE WESLEYAN with a straight face for me this is true more often than not that’s a luxury my multiplicities of privilege can afford when our concerned student 1950 protest ended the students walked away from the president’s office while he stood on the stairs with his arms crossed and the chapel started chiming “we shall overcome” i feel like he’s a weird enough guy that he did that on purpose every time i pass by him on campus he waves at me as if we met once at a party and he tried to get me to sleep with him and it took a few “no’s” for him to finally get it. one of the only things i remember from intermediate italian is how to say GOOD LUCK IN BOCCA AL LUPO meaning in the mouth of the wolf turn to the board of trustees and say, my what sharp teeth you have turn to each other and say, my what thin skin you have i will wish everyone here the best of luck after all we need all the good fortune we can get, having matriculated into such a terrible maw
things i learned in my third semester of college in a conversation on twitter i conclude that all banger poems use the rhetorical structure of “which is to say.” which is to say i have been feeling bad about my poems these days and hope it might make this one a banger. i open all my windows every night before i go to sleep. the cold keeps away the bad dreams. my bad dreams are all about that time i went to a girl i liked’s birthday party the same day i broke my ankle— how i spent the whole time crying on a fire escape because she was ignoring me, wondering how i always end up in those situations. to have something to write poems about, obviously. when i first became friends with sahil he said he was surprised i wasn’t as sad as my poems are. even when i’m happy i only know how to write poems about being sad. when she texted me at 2am in september all i replied was “i’m gonna vomit.” i think i was finally in a healthy relationship because i wasn’t writing poems about him but i missed writing poems which felt like missing her which made me feel unfaithful. but i was faithful in the way he was my best friend on snapchat all summer while he texted me about who he was fucking, and in the way i dyed his hair bright pink without gloves. it is possible to say i love you and not have it feel like a fresh blade. some girls will only kiss you
because your haircut lets them pretend they’re kissing ruby rose. no matter how hard i try this will never feel like a compliment. she only texts me to see if i’ll reply. i only want her to text me to prove to myself that i won’t. she liked my instagram post where i compared myself to ruby rose but didn’t realize it was ironic. i wear my scars around like good jokes, which is to say my ex friends’ silence cuts me every time i walk into usdan. their snapchat stories sit unopened like my new pack of exactos. mementos from when i hated myself more. i am “off my meds and fully functional” which is to say i only cry where people can’t see me. i cry with the same mouth that misses wearing lipstick. the ankle i broke hurts when it’s cold but also when i’m sad. it hurt every day since october. it’s possible to spill coffee on myself while standing absolutely still. using water as a chaser for tequila is a bad idea. typography class makes me miss my mom. when i call her i never say that i just ask about logistics. sometimes i say I’M SORRY when i mean I LOVE YOU. i have to love in spite of fear before i can love
without it. fear is just the pet name i gave all my tinder matches before i deleted the app. deleting social media apps from my phone won’t help me stop going on social media because i just open up the websites in my safari app. i am a bad person for going on my phone at dinner. i am a bad person for eating meat at dinner. it’s okay to be a bad person. walking over the brooklyn bridge on the first cold night of october with his hand in my coat pocket felt like walking home. walking home feels more like home than home ever has.
sophomore slump my emotional state this year has been somewhere on a spectrum of when i tripped over michael roth’s dog at 6pm on a tuesday to when i got blackout drunk and yelled at a bunch of jewish frat boys about anne frank i sit on my porch somewhere in the middle listening to the band that makes me cry the hardest smoking a bummed cigarette drinking boxed wine mixed with vodka cranberry i made my heart a home for others, handed them the keys in good faith, and left returned to find myself locked out and it abandoned a deep silence coming from inside many hollow organs, motifs of offal arabesque etching on the inside of my skin grotesque geometries of betrayal each different from the last a night on fountain makes me feel like a roundup ready crop something toxic and to be devoured a genetic propensity for resilient destruction you would’ve thought i’d learned my lesson writing poems about unhealthy habits calling it symbolic motif, stuck like a bird in oil
i’ve cried in so many new places on campus this year i’m really getting my tuition’s worth a university major in character building with a concentration in inappropriate crying at house parties i left without my shoes or coat, ashamed to share the sobs like new dance moves you weren’t there to stop me from entering the blizzard. someone else found me crying on their porch and walked me home safe i don’t remember her face so i sketch it in with yours the resemblance is skewed like badly developed disposables our mutual friend told me you sometimes asked how i was doing but didn’t tell me how she answered my answer is that how i was doing is horribly how i am doing is still horribly you asked but didn’t care about the answer until you were worried that i’d post about it on facebook i’ve ceased blaming you hold my body like a cliff against the sea when the grief comes in the erosion invisible until i crumble in the same corner of alpha delt where we shared a smuggled beer during a bad spoken word show last november how a place and a person become one body and how there will never be enough soil to bury you deep enough
when i moved out of my old room in december i stood in its middle and cried until i cracked like an egg hatched out a fist of anger that unfurled into resignation that sometimes giving someone everything i have doesn’t mean any of it will be what they need that sometimes being a good friend is to stop being someone’s friend my fingers forget and text your name on accident more often than they don’t you helped me move into my old room because my ankle was broken it was the last kind thing you ever did for me how many bones do i have to break before it hurts more than this how much physical therapy do i have to go to before i stop feeling with a limp i mean, how many people have to live in my heart before i forget you were ever here
cereal he was a bowlful of broken glass i poured milk over and ate for breakfast i liked the crunch a broken bone i set wrong on purpose watched it heal crooked thought the limp gave me character not even a poem could heal out of that jarbled mess not even i could speak with so much blood in my throat for seven months i didn’t write afraid of what would come out or what wouldn’t afraid i’d cut myself and it would bleed backwards i tell danette i’m feeling very jenny holzer meaning i need protection from what i want i want your mouth to speak his love i want him to say i love you with your voice
you asked if i could tell what you were writing as you traced words along my lower back with your index finger i said i couldn’t a week later you spelled out the words i love you i pretended i still couldn’t my skin was too soft it bent beneath the blade and didn’t break my bones were too brittle afraid the weight the words would rest my stomach too empty to be be sated by a crowded bed his body was a blade my throat would never yield to your body is a brick and all my bones are broken my body is a bowl you eat your breakfast from on mornings you are running late
how pretty, the moon one night i texted you to go and look at the moon and you didn’t answer. when i tell you to look at the moon i am telling you how i look at you while you are laughing at other people’s jokes. you are the moon in broad daylight. when i see you it is a good day. i don’t remember what the moon looked like that saturday but i wanted to tell you how pretty you looked in your friend’s dress and my black lipstick. the words caught in my throat along with the lyrics of fallout boy songs i learned singing along with him. you found me crying in my room when you came to get your coat. i told you sorry for everything except what i’m actually sorry about. i’m sorry that sometimes i say I’M SORRY when i mean I LOVE YOU. we both make art about why we pronounce love and fear the same way. i call them poems, you call them songs. i am afraid i will never be good at singing. i spent so long being afraid of myself i didn’t realize how afraid i was of everyone else. it’s toxic to depend too heavily on people but it’s also toxic to depend on them so lightly. lex calls me a sea urchin and it’s an endearing way of explaining how i am something sharp and furious with orange insides.
i want you to look at me the way my friends say you talk about me when i’m not in the room. it’s hard to believe in something you can’t see. that saturday in the cemetery it was so dark i wouldn’t have been able to see you leave, so dark i could believe you wouldn’t. i was drunk enough i could’ve told you i loved you and not meant it in the morning but not drunk enough that i could tell you how pretty you looked. when i say pretty i mean you feel like a green garden i walk through in a warm rain. perhaps it will bloom this spring. perhaps the flowers will open, purple-petaled with furious orange throats. perhaps they will sing and it will be beautiful and fearless and their thorns will fall off their stems at how joyous the sound. love will wake up after a night of sweet dreams and feel like itself for once, well-rested and glowing. the moon will shine every day this summer and every day on the subway i will wish i can tell you how pretty it is.
a snow and lightning season rain splits the early april sky like the break of a fever; it has been a snow and lightning season the comfort of catastrophe sleeping with the window open to feel the twinkling air on my face sometimes i hope a squirrel would come in and i would wake to find it eating acorns at the foot of my bed. my favorite poet saw doves and children running towards her in a dream from then on her poems were for them. my poems are for her, for how she taught me to remove the organ from the heart of my love render it a force without a function i return to her when i am feeling ashamed of how poems clamber around my throat like squirrels around a tree. i walked the hill in the dark, looked to the sky for a question i had already answered
orion took off his belt and beat me with it. i wept myself a warm spring rain let it fill the mouth he had bloodied all swallow, no choke i am yelling I AM SO SCARED with my whole body you confuse it for sex my mouth is too full of terror to tell you otherwise i wait until you are nearly asleep to try to explain you see, i have this recurring dream where he is a car crash and i am an ambulance too late to save the passengers where i am a rabbit and you catch my eyes through the windshield just before you run me over where you are a snowfall on the first day of spring and i keep asking why the crocuses won’t grow which came first the pain or the poem i wrote about it the poem or the pain it made me feel
things i learned in my fourth semester of college i’m halfway done with college and i can safely say i’m comfortable on this red-bricked beer-soaked square of stolen land. i have no idea what comfortable means anymore. i’m comfortable with you but holding your hand feels like slipping on black ice. i blame the event of US on slipping on ice. that is to say it’s hard not to fall for someone when you go sledding with them at 2am. i blame the event of him on confusing the words person and prison. that is to say it’s hard not to fall for someone when they build you a house with no doors and call it devotion. i was holding his hand at a concert the first time i heard you call my name. i let go of his hand to turn around. you were too drunk to remember me the next day. next month the same band from that concert is playing and i bought us tickets but never asked you to go. i always wait for the right time and there is never a right time. the right time is a moon always on the verge of being full. everything we say is cratered with collisions of past love. not everyone cares about words as much as i do. some people care more about action. neither speaks louder than the other. they are both shouting over each other and it’s the consistency of volume that matters the most. the only way i can be loud is with my whole body. the only words it knows how to say is I AM SO SCARED. the only thing it knows how to
do is run away. people ask why i am always running and i will say i’m writing. i wanted to be on the track team in fourth grade but ended up writing poems by myself at recess. i pretend that telling people i love them in a poem doesn’t count if i know they’ll never read it. i tell my friends i love them by giving them lactaid when they eat ice cream even though i never take it when i do. i still use lactose as self harm. i still cry in all my environmental studies classes. i still eat too fast. i still miss my mom. i still miss my ex friends when i see them at usdan. sahil told me you only hate people you really love and i still really hate them. when i close my eyes we are all still sitting on foss hill watching lightning break the sunset in half on our second night of college. i point out orion because it is the only constellation i know. none of them hear me because they are laughing too loud at a joke i also think is funny. the joke is YOU HAVE NO IDEA JUST HOW SCARED YOU WILL BE. all i have learned here is that i am most comfortable with discomfort. discomfort is only destructive when you’re obsessed with being comfortable. fear only hurts when you’re determined to be unafraid. it’s okay to say ouch when you get hurt. it’s okay to miss eating meat. it’s okay to still like going to the zoo. it’s okay that i let go of his hand. it’s okay to feel most at home with being homeless.
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