Student Poetry from Going on Our Nerve: Writing Through the New York School
Everything is in the poems, but at the risk of sounding like the poor wealthy man’s Allen Ginsberg I will write to you because I just heard that one of my fellow poets thinks that a poem of mine that can’t be got at one reading is because I was confused too. Now, come on. I don’t believe in god, so I don’t have to make elaborately sounded structures. I hate Vachel Lindsay, always have, I don’t even like rhythm, assonance, all that stuff. You just go on your nerve. If someone’s chasing you down the street with a knife you just run, you don’t turn around and shout, “Give it up! I was a track star for Mineola Prep.”
—“Personism: A Manifesto” by Frank O'Hara
(Cover art by Julie Laquer)
Ode to Love
Crash and crush with rocks and Sun-kissed soda
Sensitivity evermore to the ancient birds
hanging like small low blacknesses of condensed clouds
on the striped sky of power lines
You will hunch off the flowers you've come to claim
We will rise to the 18th floor balcony without music!
the elevators must have only windows and bounces
giggling past the sharp red and yellow tacks of execution
You will not see them as the river lights the curve
of the earth with willingness and lightly lipped languor
tongues touching delicately in the easy gentleness
of the yellowing fluorescent train station
“R8 next arriving on track B2”
and oh, it will gleam in the grasp and limp of our breath as it comes.
-Kelsey Detwiler
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Late
I wish I could say
That my clock
Doesn’t work
But it does, so I am late
Again
Not for school at 7:55 at Broad and Christian
For a seat on the train
For breathing space on the 27
For me to catch Ms. Trent, who isn’t there anyway
Who hasn’t been for three weeks now
Late to pick up the White Williams check
Late for the timed cross lights at 15th Street station
Late for NYU scholarships
Late for Yusef Komunyakaa
Late to hear about Reagan’s death
Late for the bell
Too late to run into Emily on her way to Temple
Too late to tell her I love her
Too late for Steve to laugh at me
Too late to pretend I care when Sarah says she’s got
a cold so we’d better not today
Late for hash browns and a stale roll
Late for Mr. Whaley’s good morning speech Late for Emmett’s story about the Go lag
Late for a half-assed presentation of Count Bassie
Late for the A that will get me to college
Late for Mr. Dunphy’s story about Carpe Diem
Late getting home
Too late for a hot dinner
Too late for an excuse
Too late to shower after hours of Ms. Canady’s
chemistry project on Silver Nitrate
Too late to talk to Ed about Bloodsimple’s new album
Late for bed
Late to fall asleep into cloudy dreams
Late for life
- Eli Bliss
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Afraid of his Own Soul
He diligently dusts all his belongings
He snorts standardized tests
He drinks yellow chalk dust from a maroon goblet
He says he won’t tell a joke without rehearsal
He is flabbergasted when no one is listening
He runs a power sander under his pillow
He won’t kick the can
He whips up tomato bisque in corn cob pipes
He filets his hair to the perfect angle
He sleeps in the bathtub
He walks on eggshells when he is dreaming
He only wears dashikis
He feels prickles on his left ventricle before a storm
He is only absurd after a shot of margarine
He is the kind of person that
He is filled with marble copy books
He sighs when the moon is full
He plays with tinker toys
He swoons when someone sings The 59th S Bridge Song
He is afraid of his own soul
He installed a PA system so his eyes could talk to
He is miserable in his heart of hearts
He springs a leak when
He is furrowing his brow way past the commotion
-Nick Dekker
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