The New Sentimentality
McKayla Conahan
Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contest 2018 (view all the winners)
Honorable Mention, Tom Howard, Poetry
Involves this fascination with purging.
O to live off of very small servings of sushi
and gourmet teas. My uncle paints his thoughts onto teapots, one
circled with commentary on eating a handful
of dry brown rice: "you'd be surprised
to find what comes out."
A physical, unexplainable desire
to be pared away like snow melt over
river rocks, I would like to believe the coarsing
of rice would sop up my toxins,
rewire my brain, and align
my chakras. In the future I dream of, I live in the Scottish countryside
and pile rocks on rocks until something hatches.
I claim to be a great listener. I am a much greater
disappointment than anyone's
interpretation of me.
I am twenty in twenty-sixteen and still listen
to emo music! When will I grow up
and plant plum trees around my skate bowl?
When will my sense of proper dress code
come back from the war? I'm sorry
for wearing cutoff denim booty-shorts to work
but not really. I have millions of coupons
for pizza, and none for sushi. I'm tired
of This, in excess. O Marie Kondo, please
whittle the stump of my life
into something easily pocketed. Please
rein the oak back into its acorn.
I would like to leave as easily as I came.
I keep giving away my hair but it only keeps growing back.
I have six years of worthless bookmarks stored
in my browser, passwords and pictures of ex lovers and friends. This
is about presence, absence,
feng shui. Super moon
eclipse. The Wikipedia article on graphology.
Picture: his hands
on the steering wheel. "Carnal Apple,
Woman Filled, Burning Moon," by Pablo Neruda. Picture:
the smile I alone seemed to care about capturing.
"Nine People Choke to Death
Eating Rice Cakes."
This is about hoarding
the past. Tigers turned to wine.
This poem is anti-minimalist, but I did not
mean to raise my child this way.
Can sentiment
and minimalism
live in the same
body?
One handful
is the most sacred unit of volume.
What can you hold?
How much can you handle?
One seamless stone
egg. The untranslatable
precise amount
of pepper, salt, or cinnamon
that is only defined by
the love the center of your palm
has for weight. When I was a child
after brushing my teeth my father
held two hands cupped with water up to my face,
and my lips drank deep the abundance.
