Marika Stokset

Picking Flowers Out

You couldn’t find me in the marketplace.

But I was there—crouching beside the orange tulips,

shrouded by the azaleas.

My Alba*

Allen Ginsberg wrote

in sad and disconnected

sentences but at least

he knew what the five years

between 22 and 27

came down to

things like a typewriter and war

and the city

and tears

and finally

dawn breaking into his bedroom

I tried to write the time too

mine 16 to 21

but I was doing gjust one thing

or so it seems:

I pushed pen into paper

so they could craft essays

and more essays

and more essays

for teacher/professor/newspaper to read

and throw out unoriginal

and at seventeen when I deserted

it was not simply to swap

my parents my home

and all those days

not perfected but nonetheless lost

for “independence”—

I was following books

to Washington to Seville to Norway

to strangers or friends I declared

I went for my soul

but it turns out five years is short—

yes, long enough to forget geometry

but small like a novel is—

and even though I gave blood

gave up meat

gave my heart once

twice traveled abroad

listened and watched

the way Ginsberg must have

I must not have looked rightly

or left enough to chance

because my soul was nowhere

and left no hints

not even in those dreams rendered

six or seven minutes

before the alarm rings

to give me the morning

standing up outside my windows.

*Taken from and modeled after Allen Ginsberg’s poem My Alba.