My Morning with the Morning of the Poem

Reading James Schuyler as it rains in the country, the sound of raindrops on the leaves of the large green tree out the window and the roof of the barn. I bought the book at a used bookstore and the binding is falling apart, falling into my lap white yellow pink. I had to take the cover off. All this beauty! Makes it hard to write a poem. The city bus is the easiest place to write a poem. Once the woman across from me ate an entire ear of corn raw, then flossed the rest of the ride. Another time the man in front of me was blaring rap music through his headphones while he hand-sewed a birthday card, threading the lines to each letter of a poem on the card and crisscross pattern border. Can you imagine?

the words curve

green
green
green

give my love to, oh, anyone

The Story Decontextualized

I am thinking about having sex with you. I am thinking of my body infinitely stretched wide and thin like dough until I become a great distance, the actual space a map represents, but in a sexy way. Someone told me she saw a star explode and it lit the sky for two days. I wish that would happen to me, and other big things, good stories to tell.  That seems a little obvious, but it’s not a metaphor. The other night I watched the meteor shower out here in the country and it was beautiful but it was not an explosion. Today I check the weather, I go out to a field, I read poems and take a picture of the field and send it to you and it floats through space thousands of miles like the ghosts of our hands on each other. The picture’s caption says “distance.” You send me a text it says “that is not what I’m feeling besides geographically” and I write a poem.

we made

this eye

that sees

for us

To Start I Could Tell You a Story About a Morning

Reverse the camera
hold high
chin down
our documented selves
in sunlight green

Tonkawa
Apache
these names roll off
our tongues
like 8,000 years

We swimmers
swim memory
bends eyes
eye and who
are we?

We float on water
the grotto holds
our voices
golden-cheeked
warblers

In this one, you hold
the camera out
our heads in a diagonal line
already nostalgic

In this one, you say
lean in faces
close on this day
in history women wore
bikinis we show only

the straps
I am the grotto
and post it filter lo-fi
say stalactite like it’s water
stand under the falling

water sometimes
take my picture
take our picture
take our bodies make
a body historic

YOLO

I don’t know the names of the stars or their constellations. I don’t know the names of clouds. I don’t know the names of trees, most flowers, most plants in general. I don’t know the tune a man whistles in the next room though I am usually pretty good at identifying songs. I don’t know the meanings of many acronyms. I just looked up the meaning of IRL which means in real life. In real life I stare at the stars and the clouds and the trees, flowers, plants and the movements the wind makes in these things for hours. You only live once. Last week my friends had to define FOMO for me which means fear of missing out. I fear missing out on real life. I don't know what that means. I fear missing out on the future. I want to live a very long time.

pink gray fog at dusk

what am I

forgetting?

Cindy St. John is the author of four chapbooks, most recently I Wrote This Poem (Salt Hill, 2014). She lives in Austin where she teaches teenagers and co-curates a reading series called Fun Party.