The notebook in my hands
feels hot, perhaps a desert,
the wild west of my imagination,
poems flittering across its pages
like tumbleweed. Any minute,
I might feel the sun beating down
on the back of my neck, some dusty
breeze having lifted up my hair.

No, but that isn't true.
I haven't gone out to the plains,
but east, am quivering under
a blanket trying to ward off
February, not wanting to look
out the window, to see the way
the floodlights make the snow
seem sulfurous and alien,
how they turn the white apartment
buildings a sickly yellow-green.

Karen is on MTV, trembling,
tears shining bright like diamonds
in her eyes of broken glass.
"Wait, they don't love you
like I love you." She's looking
right at me, her despair coming
towards me in broadcast waves.
I look for the remote control,
to shut her off so she can be alone.

The novel at my side moans softly,
would like to be remembered. Ted
has still gone and left Sylvia.
She's stuck inside the globe
of London's cold and blue, glitter
falling down on her like winter rain.
I know the story. She will be
dead before the spring comes,
Yeats' ghost hanging around by
the door, watching intently, as if
suicide were a spectator sport.

A Delaware Valley wind howls at
my door, rattling the window panes.
I don't know when I've ever felt so alone.

02/29/2004

Author's Note: Writing.com slam poem from today, the prompt being to use an interior object, an exterior sight, a piece of broadcast media, and a piece of print media.

Interior object: the notebook
Exterior sight: the light the floodlights cast on the apartment buildings and the snow
Broadcast media: the video for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs song "Maps"
Print media: Kate Moses' novel about Sylvia Plath, Wintering

Posted on 02/29/2004
Copyright © 2024 Aaron Blair