"Yogurt" & "ZZ Plant"
How did you use your time in the Midwives?
I used my time in The Midwives as an accountability boost while working on my book. My incredible midwife, Michael Osinski, and I agreed on deadlines for poetry submissions and wrote syllabi together. It was a bi-weekly opportunity to celebrate wins, chew through roadblocks, and establish deadlines.
What is a discovery you made about yourself or your process?
Michael was always reminding me to slow down and celebrate. I came into the group looking for a little butt-kicking, but it turns out I needed the opposite.
Can you describe your piece / process for us?
My two poems, "Yogurt" and "ZZ Plant," are featured in my manuscript. "Yogurt" and "ZZ Plant" were both previously published in now out-of-print journals (Let My People Cum and Book Culture's bookstore poets, respectively), so I'm very grateful to The Midwives for giving them a home on the internet!
Yogurt
Watching a tall stranger eat yogurt
and wondering whether he would brush
my face with the blonde stubble
surrounding his dried lips.
I want to take off his Doc Martens,
not to smell them
or to do any feet stuff,
but to acquaint myself
with the leather, the strands
fraying off the fabric tabs,
the wear of the seams.
His jaw lowers
as he floats the spoon
into his open mouth,
a little residue
remaining, the tunnel entrance
traced with caulk.
My wish to lick
the culture from his rim
doesn’t concern me. I continue
to stare, blurring the world,
oblivious to the buzzing barista calling,
“Sir? What would you like? Sir?”
ZZ Plant
“[This book] will not say, Isn’t X Beautiful?
Such demands are murderous to beauty,” writes Maggie Nelson,
outlining a black-feathered wing
on the angel of Good Intentions.
I moved my Zamioculcas Zamiifolia
to my roommate’s room
so it could get a little
more sun,
so it could show off
its chlorophyll,
so I could facilitate its developing
beauty, even though
Maggie Nelson may call it
murderous, even though
aesthetic expectations can be suffocating.
The feeling of control is
like a cold water-bottle
on the back of a sunburnt neck,
like laying in the snow and
allowing the sun entry,
making blue and green fireworks
on the back of my frost-bit eyelids.