High School Poetry

photo by Olivia Bee

Oy vey. I let nostalgia get the best of me. I really do. Whenever I come home to L.A., I instinctively dig through my childhood memorabilia, going through videos and photo albums. Today I found some high school yearbooks and I just ate up all the little notes my friends had written me. Apparently, I was everybody's coolest, funniest, and best friend. Leaning on those yearbooks were some old, battered literary journals. And oh man, did I find some old poems. Let's just hope you're lucky enough for me to keep posting these.

"the seaman"

his eyes swollen with memory disbelief
and drink, shadows clouding them from within,
devoured me and he lifted me to dance
pressed his fur against my cheek and gripped me
dangerously,
and laughing into my shy eyes
(who went into hiding as my prophecy grew true,)
he went on a journey,
his nose nuzzling my sacred skin like my cat
searching for a lover
his wife and his mother
his anxious eyes closed
with generations of fury
and desirous palms pressed
most gently against my eager back
his wanton eyes tamed by youth
ensconced and reprieved in this return
through the sweat he lay upon me
in his fingers gripping mine
a harem laced between them

and the captains pulled us apart
his cold eyes stabbing
wounds of memory into mine

and a parallel world grew
between us
where his wet palms prevailed
and found me
and his body sank into mine
to the tune of all men finding their mermaids
lingering in the harbors, singing
ready to take them home
and my fingers crawled along his skull
reeling him into my past
wordlessly
convinced he had taken me with him
back to sea,
together

floating further than his fingers
swimming deeper than his thighs
walking alongside seashells
my hand caught like a jewel in his.

p.s. The title of this post reminded me that I wrote my college admissions essay about bad high school poetry.