Spooky Boyfriend #5
At Jet Blue Hill in Cerro Azul
Its last lurches instill a keen sense of horror in the four teenagers, visiting the caves that morning not to destroy or become the unnamed famous. This creature moves in a way that looks familiar, moves, though, toward them. It can only be met as children are, with sticks and stones. They shove the corpse aside, for later, and later return. Take photographs. As we did the washed-up form in Montauk, as we do our variations. We speculate. Then the articles with their stomach-churning images of the rubbery thing. Our eyes scanning and never able to un-scan unfortunate sloth, alien. But recall our four teenagers in their own bald bodies, awkward and yet walking toward the caves (each having found three more to walk with). They were startled, they say. Piercing with fat branches, pounding with water-lapped stones. This is where we turn. The lifeless mass left in the creek. Vultures get there before the rest of us, make a mess of the thing. For days, we ask. What is this? And, quieter. Why does this matter? It is offered: we are afraid of what we don’t know. So we stab at it, hard, with brambles; then look elsewhere. But we made it a body. And had it been a thing of beauty.
Making Planets
I will not say it again; do not tell me what to do
with the dust under my bed. It is there
for a reason. It is turning into planets.
This requires patience, and in the meanwhile
I am doing what I can—learning to cook kale,
working on the crow pose, remembering
to call my grandmother, who recently broke
a rib and raccooned her left eye. These things
are important, and they all take time.
Pantoum
No, my ovaries do not hurt. Please stop suggesting they do.
They do not want, they do not ache, they do not pull at me.
They sit there, ripe and ready, I presume, like snare drums.
They sit there, putting no pressure on my abdomen, my life.
They do not want, they do not ache, they do not pull at me.
Children in restaurant booths are children in restaurant booths.
They sit there, putting no pressure on my abdomen, my life.
They can smile all they please; I have my own set of joys.
Children in restaurant booths are children in restaurant booths.
I am here eating alone, not envying your well-dressed offspring;
they can smile all they please. I have my own set of joys;
I love silence, I love silence, I love silence, I love silence.
I am here eating alone, not envying your well-dressed offspring;
they sit there, ripe and ready, I presume, like snare drums.
I love silence, I love silence, I love silence, I love silence.
No, my ovaries do not hurt. Please stop suggesting they do.
Jessica Young is earning her MFA in Poetry at the University of Michigan, finishing a book of “Alice in Wonderland” poems. Her work tends to slide into science or the fantastical—understandable considering her previous life studying Physics at MIT. Her poems have recently appeared in Versal and 350poems, and her prose on MIT’s OpenCourseWare and in the textbook A Creative Guide to Exploring Your Life. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, won the Meader Family Hopwood Award, and is a 4-time winner of the Ilona Karmel Writing Prizes.
"And as for something spooky… well… emotionally spooky, I’m thinking “nostalgia for the future.” And spooky-spooky… how about Go-GURT. As in, yogurt in a tube."
