a few words when I turn 23.

St. Charles, IL 2006. Auburndale gas station, 2004. Pirate parties--god, I hate that stuff, but I did it in a Santa hat. Alcohol used to be the Holy Grail. DC on constant repeat. Is there a punchline to this? Rivulets of Sprite through a cracked plastic cup on New Year's Eve. I wasn't even there for that--Poetic Fucking License. I've shouted so many songs to my car stereo these last years even in the old Accord. I'm not used to having an entire life, just half of one, or 3/4. 23 is nothing.

remembering.

A Planet Hollywood jukebox and a February where I played badminton. The first girl I ever liked--consciously--was perpetually injured. I played 1-on-2 every game of the bracket. They played the radio over the speakers--Elton John and Kiki Dee, "Don't Go Breakin' My Heart." I remember. They all went on the CD I made that winter. Those songs. Doesn't matter. My first crush was my first heartache, song or no. I played every game and won them. Was I good at badminton once? I used to be athletic. Weights and field hockey and tennis and rugby. Can you believe it? My hair used to freeze after water polo while I looked above and watched. But anyway. I remember it vividly. I dropped that CD on my basement floor. Cracks spiderwebbed out. I've never done that since, but the angle was just right....

"Amy Holbrook is...."

I keep discovering poems, songs, phrases overheard and otherwise that I want to appropriate for Facebook statuses, LJ posts, text messages, any of the hundred microcommunications I use to feed my addiction to being connected to something, because I used to have nothing, so I made this flowchart, just in Paint, I think, of what to do when I didn't know what to do, but it wasn't very helpful either, so there wasn't really anything at all. Anyway. I was looking for these words. I think you know this, because I'm always looking for words and suddenly I see on the page the thing I wanted to find six months ago. But I don't need them anymore.

old old stuff

I found an old notebook of poems from around the same time period, one of which is dated February 22, 2006. I didn't realize I wrote a lot of poems then. They appear to mostly be in response to prompts, but they aren't labelled, so I have to guess what the prompts were.

Anyway
I went to
go stand in
the yard and
watch the stars.

I know you
think it's
indulging
a bad habit

But I needed
to put my
head in my hands
and cry.

(I think this was some kind of WCW or short-lines prompt of some kind, I don't think I'd do this otherwise.)

Surrealism

The whole of my life has come into my room
and it is surprisingly small.
Here is a bowl of my memories, wishing it were
silver-white but sadly just a
paltry mix of half-stories, jagged and bright.

(not sure what if anything this was in response to or if it's related to the next one:)

Untitled

I have gathered everything in the world
in a room, and watch it from behind a two-way mirror.
You can tell from my glasses that I am a scientist.
I record my data and
put it in jars and
label the jars "poem."
[Four subsequent lines violently scratched out]

Dear March: It's Not a Contest

When we go to visit my sister in the hospital,

I wonder if I am forgetting some magic words,

some good-sister invocation to make everything right,

but I don't remember one,

so I buy her a magazine and we play board games.

My mother and I fight about my headphones.

She slams the door.

I wonder if I can spend my days

shelving CDs—I especially like alphabetizing—

because as much as I don't want to stay here,

I don't want to go anywhere else.

"Has March out-February-ed February this time?"

my girlfriend asks. I wish

I could tell you she was holding my hand,

but she was typing,

thirteen hundred miles away.

New Year’s Day

As the bells chimed, there was a wild

electric thrill in the air, a hum

of possibilities stretching out

in all directions, farther than we could see,

and we were laughing, and

I squeezed my cup so hard that Sprite

was streaming through cracks,

down my arm,

onto the pavement,

but it didn’t matter because

one of us moved first and

the new year was a whirlwind

and right at the center were Holly and I,

kissing.

[a too-long and rambling meditation on February that I don't care to transcribe in full, although I like:
"I never met him.
It's all about Alyssa.
Except for the time it was my sister
watching videos with half her hair shaved off.
My mother said there were never any debts
but she was lying."]

[followed by an incredibly boring poem about attempting to buy a ring at Kohl's as some kind of metaphor for emotional progress, why in the FUCK did I even bother to write this. The margins are full of hearts.]

Here it descends into fragments that don't make a lot of sense:

• "The first thing is that I got kicked out of engineering school"
• "Too many days hiding in bed after too many nights awake doing crossword puzzles on too much Adderall"
• A timeline that doesn't mean anything that I can discern with dates like "1998--Honorable Equinox"
• "Grief & Loss, I lost"
• "People who don't care about anythin will never understand people who do" "Yeah, but we won't care." [--Angel]

I hope everyone enjoyed this Content Theater for my poetry blog. I haven't written much lately. I've been too in love.

Today was the first cold day.
I stepped out of my car and thought "Where am I?"

Things become commonplace.

I cried where you couldn’t see, pressed against you. I descend to the lower level to ensconce myself in oak veneer—maybe we’ll never see eye-to-eye—and pretend, while she texts me my lines. I rest my head on a last-edition Black’s. Sometimes when I drink, I narrate series of verbs: “Stand. Pull. Set. Toss. Clutch. Click. Switch.” I have nothing to give you. My pockets are newly empty, except for a locket I clicked open one time too many. There’s a trick to it now. There are too many parts I can’t show yet, even while I say “This is everything.” I lie back on my red sheets, alone, and think, “Almost there.” All in good time. I raise glasses and whisper toasts. I start too many sentences with “I” that never finish.

you can't throw letters into the fountain.

Jules told me this morning that the weather did Boston first, then Baltimore. Life is more literary than literature, I remember, wishing I were sitting on the lip of the fountain where etc. while I relate this quotation to you, but I’m a thousand miles away from it and a quarter of that from you, wearing nothing but a gray t-shirt and addressing you letters I will throw into its lack of waters—it’s October, after all. I have photographic proof you’ve seen it but I’ve never asked you about it. I lie on my bed and stare at the ceiling wishing you would return. I take photos with my phone I can't ever show you. I can’t justify word one of this to anyone, but there’s a pull, unassailable, and I’ll sit in a Baltimore train station at 3:55 Monday morning for reasons I can’t articulate. I take my permanent marker from a plastic cup on my desk with fortunes taped to it—“Stop searching forever, happiness is just next to you”—and write “You are Loved” at my base. I won’t tell you I did it, but it will be there when the Jack Bauer clock runs itself out.