♥ three of thirty-three.

my college friend, adam, is a talented and prolific poet- 

who often shares his work on facebook for hungry art-lovers like

me to devour in one sitting. adam recently compiled thirty-three great poems

 into one place! (hooray!! ) here are three of my favorites:

WEIRD

When I was in

the second grade

some little blonde girl

in a blue dress

waked up to me

on the playground

and said

YOU'RE WEEEEEEIRD.

and I couldn't deny it

in my tie dyed socks

and dinosaur pants

and constant bad jokes

and I was okay with that

most of the time

but something still felt off

like I wanted to say

Look, I appreciate your

observation, but

you're a cookie cutter white girl

in a blue dress

and you

read books about horses

and I won't rail on you

for that

if you don't rail on me for

my neon Converse and

the fact

that I eat my hot dogs on a slice of bread.

But I didn't have the words.

Well, now I do.

And that same little boy

is writing

these weird poems and

cherishes the weird moments

when they go well

when people clap for them

when publishers print them

when they strike like lightning

when they devour like sharks

when they flow like warm rivers

of mustard on a hot dog

on a slice of bread

and nobody is looking at my socks.

GRANDMA JOYCE

My grandmother told me

that chemo made everything

taste like copper. I imagined

pennies erupting from her mouth

and wondered how many

would fit inside my own, but

never had the guts to try it.

When initially diagnosed,

my grandmother confessed

she didn’t really want to live

anymore anyway, and asked the

doctors if she could surrender.

Joyce, they said, this is a

highly treatable form of cancer.

You should consider yourself lucky.

Yeah, she said, I’m really lucky.

After the months

of automatic hospital doors,

phone calls from church ladies,

Jello cups, ice cream cups, the tearing

open of get-well cards, heart monitors,

you leave me the hell alones,

soap opera arguments, and

nurses telling jokes to light the room

my grandmother got her way

and that same optimistic doctor told us

it was over.

Hands pressed firmly on a window sill,

I watched as she flew up to heaven

in a solo plane trailed by a golden banner

that said

Never, ever tell me what to do...

COLLEGE

During my

first year of college

my head

exploded

all over

my childhood bedroom.

There were fragments

of skull

wedged

in between the pages

of my

old poetry books.

Blood stained

my pastel sheets.

My eyes,

now in different corners,

suddenly saw everything

a little bit

differently.