{"id":3911,"date":"2013-05-26T02:36:33","date_gmt":"2013-05-26T02:36:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sporkpress.com\/?p=3911"},"modified":"2013-05-26T02:36:33","modified_gmt":"2013-05-26T02:36:33","slug":"2-poems-by-melissa-cossey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/2013\/05\/26\/2-poems-by-melissa-cossey\/","title":{"rendered":"2 Poems || Melissa Cossey"},"content":{"rendered":"

I Will Do This For All Of You<\/strong>
\n 
\nMy main fear of the End
\n is that there will not be enough
\nto complain about.
\nThat we will all be unwavering
\n in our job of trying not to die.
\nThat we will make desperate
\nfriendships with neighbors
\n who decently stockpiled goods,
\nand embrace a life of smelling
\ncanned foods for rot.
\nThat we will spend hours
\n bravely considering the horizon,
\n thinking of others.
\n 
\nThat the greenest grass
\n will still be swaying.
\nThe new tints of environmental
\ncatastrophe, exciting.
\n Children will be born with
\n the only thing they need
\nto survive which is and always has been
\ndeep sadness.
\n 
\nI have higher hopes for the End.
\nI wish to be the first to lose my shit.
\nI will scream and run,
\ncollect my belongings dramatically,
\n say hundreds of wet goodbyes.
\n I will do this for all of you.
\nI will cry and pull my hair.
\nI will contact all of your ex- boyfriends.
\nI will hold the trash bag
\nfor your mother as she stuffs
\npictures of you inside.
\nI will dig a hole
\nin your backyard, pull
\nthe sod over like a blanket
\nand hide.
\n 
\n 
\n____________________________________
\nBaby Daydream<\/strong>
\n 
\nIn the aisle of Target you see a handsome
\n new father doing goo goo to his daughter
\n and it makes you want to have a baby.
\nSuddenly, you\u2019re pregnant
\nwith a baby you can have when you want
\nand not have when you do not.
\n 
\nYou wonder: Should you breastfeed the baby
\nor should it come out eating steak dinners?
\nThe baby who eats steak dinners will also be able to talk
\nand will dress itself. When it is time for dress up
\nthe baby will regress to an age akin to the helpless
\nluffing of a sailboat, with only you, only you
\nto steer it into the wind.
\n 
\nThe tiniest bud of selfishness blooms
\nand a supple loneliness fills your apartment,
\ninterrupted only by the cheerful dinging
\nof the microwave
\nsaying it has prepared something for only you.
\n 
\nYou bring the baby back at bath time, rock it sweetly,
\nhoist it to look at itself in the sweating mirror with so much joy.
\nWhen baby gets too heavy you will the baby away
\nand go to bed to think of boys.
\nSometimes baby comes to the wilderness,
\nand always sits still when the light is right,
\nespecially in the Fall, when you notice the baby has hair on its legs!
\nYou cry and laugh and call your mother.
\n 
\nThe sometimes-baby will always answer the phone
\nwhen you call, needing to be talked down because
\nyou are dying slowly and untragically and without much fuss.
\nI\u2019m dying! you say to the baby, who is now not a baby
\nbut perhaps an accountant or pawn shop owner.
\nWe\u2019re all dying! the accountant baby will say,
\nlaughing contagiously. Accountant baby
\nis wise without being too much of a know it all.
\n 
\nYou will the baby one morning to come
\nand eat a bowl of cereal with you,
\nto be four years old, to tell a funny story.
\nBut the baby is reluctant to come.
\nThe baby is tired of being jerked around.
\nThe baby wants you to know he\u2019s not mad,
\nhe\u2019s just disappointed.
\nIt\u2019s me or you the baby says.
\n 
\nYou tell the baby you need some more time.
\nWhat of my long showers?
\nThose dusks when the birds were enough?
\n 
\nThe baby yawns and turns to sleep.
\nHis every twitch is a reason you never thought of
\nto try and get the baby back, to take back the
\ntime you didn\u2019t want the baby
\nbut you can\u2019t
\nand the pink sky is primping on the horizon,
\noffering nothing but more of what you can\u2019t touch
\nnothing but more of what you can\u2019t do anything about.
\n 
\n 
\n_____________________________________
\nMelissa Cossey <\/strong>is a poet and tutor living and working in Carbondale, IL. Melissa is a former online magazine editor and MFA drop-out. Her recent publications include Prime Mincer Literary Journal. <\/em>
\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I Will Do This For All Of You   My main fear of the End is that there will not be enough to complain about. That we will all be unwavering in our job of trying not to die. That we will make desperate friendships with neighbors who decently stockpiled goods, and embrace a life […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,2],"tags":[64,75],"class_list":["post-3911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-things","tag-melissa-cossey","tag-online-magazine-editor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3911\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisissporkpress.com\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}