National Poetry Month 2020 Day 6: “Happy” & “Paperclips”

I was introduced to Michelle Tea in college and I liked her gritty, modern, real-world approach. Until then, most of the poetry I read was specifically for children or very traditional. Beautiful, insightful, but a bit fanciful. Here was a fresh voice, using language to describe city life and coming of age and stark reality.

Happy

By Michelle Tea

I love this city

Too many girls smile at me when I walk

Down the street and there goes a jogger

Wearing nothing but skimpy shorts 2 nipple rings

And a smile and what about the one

In the castro who only ever wears a g-string,

All that skin and never any bruises,

It’s as if people just leave him alone,

Let him live his life with his ass hanging out.

I love this city

Everything you need you can buy on the sidewalk

In the mission, that is, until the cops started coming

By and handing out fines and if these guys could afford to pay a fine they probably wouldn’t be trying to sell you a 

Set of cookware for seventy-five cents

But I guess that hasn’t occurred to the cops, 

Or the mayor, who used to be a cop and

Once a cop always a cop, or so they say

But I love this city

Every single night of the week I can find a café

To drink cups of bad poetry in, and they don’t

Look at me weird when I ask for soy milk,

Or if the oat cakes are vegan,

It’s a pretty flaky place

Dangerous, too

I’ll probably leave soon because I’m getting really; tired of watching my back and listening to stories about those who let their eyes wander

But right now it’s sunny,

And I was just walking down market street 

Getting smiled at by girls and giving all my change away

To punk rock kids who need to take a bus somewhere

Or drink some beer or eat a hamburger

I don’t know, I’m just glad I could help out,

I’m just glad I’m 22 and far away from my parents, 

I’m just glad I’m alive,

And I mean that 

In the most dramatic and cliché way possible,

I just love this city.

Sometimes growing up can be a very disorienting business.

Beautiful, but messy and confusing and difficult, too.

Paperclips

By Blythe Stephens

I sit, with smoothie

Lost

Caught

Desperately searching for I don’t know what

Why hadn’t I seen this coming

Tempted

Intrigued

Sorting colors

Of paperclips

Linking them together

Trying to sort and link

The events of my life

Heart pounding

Disarray

Nothing happened

But something happened

“We can just forget this conversation ever happened”

she says, but I know

there is no way I can ever forget

It is done

I am undone

No amount of paperclip organization 

Will put what I knew 

And what I must do

back together