Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Thisbe and Olivia on Orchard Street [1]


This is the start of a very long poem.


I. Thisbe in Mrs. Faber’s First Grade Class


The felt bleeds, I know I can see it. Inky fingerprints. It must hurt the markers! For me to color, they give what Crayola gave them.


But the factory made each marker for a purpose. So one must feel good when I use it, the friction drawing out juice. And it must like my picture—


the wetting and digging and pulling of paper fibers, ink mixing with ink to make the red-orange of Kelly Ridd’s hair.


While sitting in my desk, does a marker ache for use? I should use them all the time! But they expire! And to expire is to die—so they must be in pain. So it is one or the other.


I wish I could just ask them.


I bet I could color my hair the color of Kelly Ridd’s hair.


My desk smells like wet saltines. I could to better at keeping it clean.



I. Olive on the Way Home from the Coffee Shop


I got robbed!


The kind where the asshole confused me behind the till. Twenty for a dollar, three tens for a twenty and a five and five dollars, five for five and ten dollars, no could I have three tens if I give you ten and five dollars. Then it’s a bouquet of paper that smells like salt and later my drawer is twenty short.


The shop is slowly folding. Now I am twenty short. I was already short.


This morning I got two shots in two arms. That was dumb. Idiotic symmetry. Two sets of clumpy muscles. And I lost the quarter inch I grew last summer.


I’ll still tell people I’m five five.


I don’t mean to sound defeated. But now my driver’s license is mostly a lie and I just lost twenty dollars.



Kelin Loe



1 comment:

  1. Kelin, its great to read your poetry again! I love the rhythm of your voice in this poem. It manages to have a childlike sensibility, with a precocious spirit.

    Email me if you have any questions about Amherst (I grew up there).

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