meganleannepoet-blog

[meganleannepoet-blog]

Another feature image from my prose poem "The Punchline" at @pitheadchapel #prosepoetry #pitheadchapel #instapoem #instapoetry

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Whoaaa I got made into a thing! #poetsofinstagram #instapoetry #instapoem #prosepoetry #pitheadchapel

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Honored to have my work featured in @pitheadchapel #prosepoetry #instapoetry #instapoem #poetsofinstagram

[meganleannepoet-blog]

EVERYONE GETS EATEN BY SHARKS

(for Versify podcast and Makayla Wisniewski-Pride Nashville 2017)

The lump in your throat  be the time bomb be the tick of trembling toes be the soft space of darkness before

the curtains bloom open. Before petals of light-lint blossom on your face and the eyes meet the lights. Your mouth is now the explosion the firework of pride and clawing out of a shell never felt so full of sparks. Now darling,  be the thunder. Not the rattle of heels in leather cowboy boots but the becoming -  a cosmic self-collapse and rebirth. A voice made to turn any courtroom into a sanctuary. Praise everyone who has brought you to this moment, but especially yourself. Do not fear the open mouth for what might spill out. Fear the closing, how it makes the throat a chain how the chain is tough and rusted. Tough like the night you met Dawn with a loneliness the weight of silence and no one was there to hold you. I am here to hold you. Give me your sweatiest palm. Give me your shortest breath. Give me every moment you said no when you meant to say yes.

Let’s become a canyon let’s burst the insides out Show them heartbreak Show them panic Show them blood- what makes us alive is not the skin we try so hard to hide in: it is the pulsing the red quake of freedom and don’t worry everyone gets eaten by sharks.

[meganleannepoet-blog]

Can you relate? From a new piece "In Which I Stayed." #poetry #poem #poetsofinstagram #instapoetry #instapoem #nashvillepoets #poetsofig #poetrycommunity #tastethis #love

[meganleannepoet-blog]

From a new piece "In Which I Stayed." #poetry #poem #poetsofinstagram #instapoetry #instapoem #nashvillepoets #poetsofig #poetrycommunity #tastethis #love

[meganleannepoet-blog]

Had a great time this weekend working the mic at the WeHo art crawl and got the best story to write about! This was such an awesome experience. With @versifypodcast @wpln @porchtn #nashvillepoetry #poetryondemand #versifypodcast

[meganleannepoet-blog]

"Ameliorate: 1. A) to make more tolerable B) to grow better/improve 2. You've watched me Scrape this self- Loathing from my skin Like suicide cells My flesh be a bridge This itching be the noose Your mouth be the sun Shed your light here Show my body what it means To let go 3. I am leaning the language Of wanting Wanting better Wanting truth Wanting more Of myself 4. The language of comfort Is dead, only Spoken by the shadows The broken neck I used to be." #wordoftheday #dictionary #dictionarydotcom #poetry #poetsofinstagram #instapoetry #instapoet #poem

[meganleannepoet-blog]

Easier to Pronounce

EASIER TO PRONOUNCE

 She says lesbian, and the word lies beneath her tongue. She does not swallow, it simmers and chalks when she talks of her body, her body is a garden of tulips, two lips she lets women kiss. They are sacred and kind and familiar.

 She says lesbian to the chair where her father used to sit, used to sharpen the grip of his anger. His hands were so big and curious. They searched her body in the night pining for forgiveness. He touched her like a broken promise

 and she, silent as snowfall on twitching street lights clung to the leash of her holy, let him stumble through her flesh, watched him fall to his knees begging for salvation, and she virginity unrequited

 fashioned trust from the empty in her child. He left her. The pill of all this innocence still  dissolving in her gums. She says lesbian because it safe, because boy trapped in girl body is easier to pronounce than rape because boy trapped in girl body keeps other boy hands far away. They will not shipwreck their masculine in the ocean of her.

 And then what is queer but this label we noose around our love? Our necks are so uncertain, the exposure of all of this spine expecting grace in a body still so unaware of itself.

And then what is boy but expectations we beat into each other? All this boy behavior we never teach men to grow out of. All this boy behavior we refuse to teach girls the truth of.

 And then what is lesbian but a safer place to land than self? What is sexuality, but a series of nametags we keep trying to pin to our chests? There is blood everywhere from all the ways they fail to fit.

The first time she kissed a boy, lesbian was still in her mouth along with his breath, and her mouth was open. Her jaw-bone holy hymnal, non-binary, her queer speaking love in any language that love would understand.

And then what is love but the string of a violin plucked waiting for another to sound out the same note? No matter where it falls in the hands of the conductor, no matter how many times it is shoved in the confession booth, no matter how many eardrums refuse to call it music.

[meganleannepoet-blog]

My Computer will Crash

My computer will crash.

 It will happen suddenly, a gust of jolts swimming upstream. The keyboard will firework and the screen will dance its geometric dance in rejoice of all manmade things. It will be brilliant and precious and wrought with panic.

 Or, perhaps, it will rust away slowly. Response times slowing per stroke of the backspace key, the space bar, or the ‘8’ key with the star above its temple. I will become increasingly fret-bellied with every new sound and grit and malfunction. Like a body full of bones and muscle wilting away in the nighttime, I will consider it gone long before it is buried with the forgotten.

 And what will become of me then?

The version of myself in the mornings, half-drunk on insomnia and poetry tapping away on the keys, will she revert back to Bic pens and Lisa Frank journals? Is the sound of a scratching pen tip as lovely? Sure, it’s romantic. In the way that handwritten post cards and pen pals are romantic. It isn’t practical and the timing is far too hefty.

When did I become this uninspired with artistic process?

 And what about my friends? The ones who send instant messages to tell me they miss me, and the ones I haven’t spoken to in years but still tag me in videos to show that I still cross their minds. That somehow, there is still this special bond that we have expanding larger than any reasonable relationship model would fit into. What would become of us then?

 Could I convince them to write letters with me? We could buy pens in each other’s favorite colors and send Polaroids of our bedrooms are our favorite parks or the skyline of our cities. We would know so much of each other, without knowing so much of each other. The letters would smell like us on our good days and we would use our best handwriting, sign our names in cursive.

Who would carve away a space that archaic for someone they haven’t spoken to in years?

 When I was twelve, I had a pen pal from Michigan. Her name was Kayla. I still have dusted photos of her, her brothers, her bedroom. If I were twelve today, I wonder if I would have an e-mail pal. Would that be a breech of Internet safety? How was sharing an address not a breech of safety? Is this an acknowledgement that the Internet is far more dangerous? Danger of the inevitable, unromantic machine gun talk?

 If I had a computer then, and my computer crashed (with a certain modern flair) would I still have been pen pals with Kayla? Would it have mattered nearly as much?

Is this what it means to love someone – to create a love independent of computers and apathetic social advancement? To love with artistic intention, meaning to keep the distance at a distance by any means necessary.

I cannot live in this world without steeping away in the impermanence of it all. My computer will die, and thus parts of myself will sink away along its side. Maybe making new computers, or finding new ways to be whoever it is that I am.  

Woman made of man, computer made of man.

We are made of man, my computer and I.

We are stuck in a world made of walls and doors that refuse to open with signs reading “Come Inside.” Nothing is truthful when we are swarmed in knowing it all and knowing nothing all at once.

Man-made things

 I am a woman drunk on nostalgia and poetry.

Poetry is not poetry unless it is an office document.

I am loathsome of the medium, I am made in the medium, I am dependent upon the medium at best.

[meganleannepoet-blog]

Maybe I wrote a three minute story about the best group hug ever. Just maybe. #artisalligot #ihavenoideaifitsenough

[meganleannepoet-blog]

R.I.P. This body This earth All bodies Unbleached Unphallic These voices Sound so sweet Beating beneath the muzzle Hold your throat Tighter than you meant to They like their women this way They like their broken this way Half alive Shameful Thinking we did it to ourselves. #pelvis #nohashtagswillmakethisokay

[meganleannepoet-blog]

“How big is the space between  us when our bodies pretend they are comfortable so naked? Can it be measured in the second-guessing heavy in our mouths? Language can be so inarticulate, sometimes. Our flesh likes to speak for itself. How gorgeous, this absence of holy in our dark.”

[meganleannepoet-blog]

One of my new pieces that I'll be sharing at the happening this Friday night! Wanna see how it ends?! Make it out early, 3 dope poets spitting verses at 8:30 pm this Friday at The Bearded Iris! See you there! #idontthinkyourereadyforthisjelly #poetsofinstagram #instapoetry #instapoet

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Bit from a new piece called "write bad poetry" because...you should write more bad poetry. #poetsofinstagram #instapoetry #spokenword

[meganleannepoet-blog]

"Dear mom When I look at the sky I see yesterday And tomorrow I smell dinosaur breath I feel the heat waves dancing off robots Learning art and compassion I hear the whistle of a riverbed Unpecked by human fingers Lullabies whispered from the owls To the stars Language That does not fit on the human tongue. When humans speak in tongues it feels so primal Like we are pushing away from these bodies Like we know we are but animals after all Like we know just how small we are The first time I stood on a mountain it swallowed me whole I did not sing holy I cried out GORGEOUS GORGEOUS GORGEOUS! How the fog poured itself into the valley! How the valley said yes In a blossom of dew drops on its skin How my footprints were impermanent How my lungs were mere driftwood In the ocean of all of this Everything. For weeks I cried over landfills Over military graveyards Over pipelines Over poison we plant like seeds Dear mom I have so much existential angst about being human." #poetry #poetsofinstagram #poetsifig #laurencoakleyphotography #harmonicbutta @laurenmcoakley @harmonicthreads

[meganleannepoet-blog]

Sophie

she dances tonight like her son nightmared a tumor so deep in his skull it took two years of nights as heavy as homeless as motionless as fallen trees to remember her body again

her body a castanet of choir claps so out of unison it sounds like bandstands her body drinking life up like God meant water to taste her body a gospel song explosions of hearstrings I’ve never heard the tune of

she dances tonight

I want this to be so important that men stop fighting wars they cannot name the truth of

I want this to be so real we stop pretending global warming doesn’t exist

I want her to dance like everyone is watching

like two years is too long to feel so ungrateful for lungs