Poem For When I Am Startled By My Reflection
I think of all the tall
in me and am tempted to call it
narrow. On the subway
I do the unthinkable
and spread my legs wide. I am looking
to be something so solid
nothing can pass through me
without a fight.
Sometimes, or rather,
often I seem to myself
a small and feeble thing,
dog-like and trembling before
I catch my reflection and remember
my hair isn’t blonde
anymore
and my eyes don’t really look
all that much like saucers.
Sometimes, or rather,
often I open the camera on my computer
before raising my hand to speak.
I throw myself down the steps
of first impressions and am surprised
when my body makes a sound at the bottom.
In front of a mirror
I slap myself. No more,
I say. You are not
a boy begging. Living
from this body makes it seem smaller,
but look here, your knees
can press up against the knees
of the stranger next to you on the train
and your mouth is a steady line.
For the Poem That Insisted I Be A Poet on the Lawns of Johnson and Wales University
to (and from) Hanif Abdurraqib’s “For the Dogs Who Barked at Me
on the Sidewalks in Connecticut”
In March I tried writing / a love letter to a poet / and started a war / with reverence / I am left
wondering / if words can admire / themselves / listen darling / I am / usually like this / concerned
greatly with my beloveds’ / understanding / of my admiration / if there is that which towers before us /
then you are the walls / and the curtains / that make up my home / and behold me / for all that is little
/ and human / my small and eager darling / your leaving could never be / an echo / because there will
never be a way to dig poetry / out of my belly / you’re the only seed I can swallow / and not prevent something / green from blooming / I want to apologize for how adulthood has rendered me / but
rendering is just beginning / I say I am / usually like this / but actually I haven’t lived long enough to
know / what anything is like / usually / except I am always begging for something to stay / except for a
poem / that promises not to beg / as long as I am living / there will be at least one wild thing / that
holds me again / and again / for so long.
A Stranger Told Me He Could Have Guessed I Am a C-Section Baby
after Hanif Abdurraqib’s “Ode to Elliot Smith, Ending in the First Snowfall of 2003”
I think he might know I am afraid to be alone,
a fear that could be rendered if I could ask everyone
if they, too, are as lonely as the day they were born.
from the beginning, I have made a shelter of others,
so much that my mother’s belly had to be cut in two,
now slashed with a scar that proves I am alive.
a seam from which I was pulled, purple & coiled,
unwilling to move from the folded sanctuary of myself.
my brother followed me out of the scam
eight years later, my mother fearing
that the scar would zipper wide open
if she pushed him out like he was willing.
I want to ask him if people look at him & see the same
loneliness they must see in me, if he
was ready to abandon the warmth of a belly
my mom tried every trick to turn me
the right way, frozen peas and special exercises in the pool
but I was determined to align myself with her body,
and have been trying ever since to again stitch myself to another.
I want to remember my birth; I want to know
if my resting fetal body, feet first,
was some kind of resistance to being alone,
if the panic I felt when my dark sky was ripped open
& hands described to pull me into a harsh brightness,
where I reveal my origins to a graying man who tells me
”it’s the way your face settles, your mouth, the corners slope downward.”
Ellen Rogers is a poet originally from Denver, Colorado and currently residing in Yonkers, NY. He is a junior at Sarah Lawrence College studying poetry, literature, and queer theory. He frequently writes about gender/identity, home, & food— but because he believes that every poem is a love poem, they write love poetry. They are especially fond of a long title. When they aren’t writing, you may find them planning drag looks/numbers or rearranging his collection of dolls.