I Chime in the Wind

Yo, what's up? It's time for another poem! It's midterms week here at Trinity, and you know what that means! STRESS DREAMS!!! WOOOO! WE LOVE HER!!!

So, here is a poem I wrote about a god awful dream I had in which I was embedded with glass needles. It was a pretty lit time, but the weirdest part was waking up and being like "oh hey, what the fuck? That wasn't real?" (As you can tell, I'm very eloquent and have would never deign to speak in the common tongue, but only allow the highest speech to grace my lips)

I hope all of the one person who will ever read this enjoys this poem. I've been working on it since last summer and I finally think it's ready! The part about Pachinko was really hard to get right, and it still doesn't quite work. Tell me if you have any suggestions!

Here's the poem:

I Chime in the Wind

I am a cactus

Glass spines embedded

In chlorophyll flesh

Deep in my marrow

The wind pulls

(I feel it now, 

Clear and ringing pain,

Like teaspoons

On champagne flutes)

Tears trickle

From one Pachinko peg

To the next

To the next 

To the next.

I touch my quills

I pluck the barbs.

(Like unripe fruit,

They do not give.)

I swallow and am 

Chewed alive 

When I wake, 

Cautious fingers probe soft skin

And I am surprised to find myself

Whole. 

Mother

Mother

let me hold you and caress you.

like I once did,

long, long ago,

when you were still mine.

let me breathe love into your lungs.

let me make you Mine again.
let me dig my potter’s hands into your supple skin.

let me in

let me in
let Me in

Background

This poem is actually an excerpt from a terrible one I wrote in 2015. I must've been a sophomore or junior in high school, and I found out that they were taking submissions for our school lit mag. I decided to write a poem, in the middle of lunch, that was a dialogue between Mother Nature and society (cringey, I know). I don't think I even edited it, I just submitted it right away. I can't remember if it was accepted or not...

Anyway, I came across it the other day when I was going through my old Google drive writing folder. I hadn't seen it in years, but I really loved the first four lines of the poem, which I took directly from that poem, and I played around with it until it accidentally became this. I hope you all like it, took me ages to get that line about potter's hands just right. The thing that finally cemented it was Wild Geese by Mary Oliver, which doesn't talk at all about potters or hands, but just weirdly made me think of the phrase. (If you haven't read it, you're in for a treat!)

I'm excited to post more on here, for the three people that will read it. I hope all three of you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoy writing it, though I must admit it feels odd to take something you've worked so hard on and throw it into the aether.