Creative Writing
Making up fairytales, writing my own dictionaries, and electing to author research essays with my computer time from a young age was clear foreshadowing. At age 14, I enrolled in my county's arts high school to study creative writing. By age 18, I had plenty of experience doing poetry readings, had authored and co-authored plays that were performed locally, and was on my way to Barnard College to study English. Here are a few short poems I've written over the years.
Stuck on Sheepside
free verse, 2019
Stuck on Sheepside
There’s a hill in my hometown that looks like the edge of the world.
From every angle, nothing continues after the mound
except for sky. Sheep are kept on the sloping earth
but this doesn’t make them experts— all their lives
stuck inside a parallelogram prison,
they must itch more than me to see
what goes on over the hill. Not so much as a branch
fractures the horizon line. Every time driving past I think,
I’ve got to show this to someone someday.
In reveries, this place at the world’s end
holds me still and all I can do is stare until my eyes dry
and silhouette bleeds midnight. I don’t know
what I see from the edge. Am I still
looking? A hundred blue-budding trees that craze
a blue beyond, one thousand someones,
or maybe something more, another
slanted fence-full of sheep
kept on the other side of the hill.
Harvest
shakespearean sonnet, 2015
Harvest
The single stoplight flicks from red to green.
Two trucks, she notes, jolt tiredly on their way--
she thinks she’s seen all that there is to see:
the four places to drink and five to pray.
​
She’s seen the cornfields, barren, crunchy, dry,
and says, “there’s nothing here to do.” She dreams
of cities, beaches, places she could fly,
imagines towns where even soil gleams.
​
Yet, in the morning she awakes to sun.
Outside her window, birds call from their trees
and beckon her to see what’s not been done.
“The world’s a garden, so get on your knees.
​
Start planting or the harvest will not come--
there’s beauty to be found if you seek some.”
Declaration
of
indulgence
free verse, 2022
Declaration of Indulgence
Let’s jam, babydoll.
I’ve lost more blood in New York City showers
than anywhere else in the world:
this and the laughter make me feel alive.
If I flash the tenants of my building shaft
it’d be better than those Cats
could do, the nosebleeds–
a fella doesn’t have to be doll-dizzy to see
that I’m alive-alive, pink cheeks from headrush,
from the blood, and painting the town red,
and laughter for three nights in a row
‘til we’re lousy with mascara puddles
and abdominal muscles. The big tickle.
Later on when all the underground crowds
sweat with us and the wet-
rags-for-wings pigeons won’t take our m&ms
let’s me and you beat feet, angelface.
When you’re ALIVE there is NO TIME
except for that which razzes your berries,
and this pit spares no passion;
germs and bugs, but no dice. So
come on, let’s go, let’s cut out,
let’s cut our losses and burn
rubber, daddy-o, let’s flat out
haul some ass to the toast
and me and you’s’ll jam, jam, jam.
magic in the moonlight
Villanelle, 2016
magic in the moonlight
beneath the beaming, lustrous moon
we run through fields until they spin
i think the light is coming soon
​
below a bridge where rocks are strewn
we climb and fall and make a din
beneath the beaming, lustrous moon
​
i burst the walls of my cocoon
and shake off pieces of its skin
i think the light is coming soon
we zip with zing and loudly swoon
and smoke our smokes and bang our shins
beneath the beaming, lustrous moon
and still we know we’re not immune
if parents ask where we have been
i think the light is coming soon
​
amidst the balmy wind’s strange tune
we hear the night call us its kin
beneath the beaming, lustrous moon
i think the light is coming soon