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poems by
trista mateer
[redacted] copyright © Trista Mateer 2016
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used, performed, or reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written consent from the author except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews.
1st edition
ISBN-13: 978-1537539997
Cover Design: Eric Scribner
Cover Model: Carla Daniela Aldrete
here’s to Netflix, value wine,
and Charlotte
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POEM IN WHICH THE MOON BREAKS UP WITH ME
Sugar, you never sleep anymore.
It’s the time difference.
I don’t want to miss your calls.
I’m worried about you.
I hate the idea of you waiting
by the phone. Orbiting
around somebody like that
is no way to live.
I don’t think either of us
are really getting what we want.
Not to be a cliché, but
maybe we need a little
space.
You’ve got to be fucking
kidding me.
COLD SPOT
These are the long months
when the poems all come out misshapen
and every ghost story sounds like a love note
if I use the right tone of voice.
Which is to say–
I don’t always know the difference between
haunting and hanging on.
Which is to say–
this is less poem and more grave marker, so
here are my roses.
These are my good shoes
and he is everything underneath them.
LOW-KEY TENDER POET ON THE IMPORTANCE OF RECOGNIZING SOULMATES IN THE CONTEXT OF PLATONIC RELATIONSHIPS, or CHARLOTTE
She steals pint glasses from bars because of her father and I steal pint glasses from bars because of my mother. Which is to say, we are both comfortable making monuments to love out of things that shatter. Like glass. And poetry.
She laughs when I call her tender in the way that only someone who fights to be seen as hard, is tender. We call it, “low-key tender.” She calls me a peach and I call her a cactus, but only because of the way she soaks up my affection like water—even from a distance.
On the days there are 4,000 miles between us (which are most days), we text like it’s an art form. She says, “I have not yet encountered something I wouldn’t do for you. Sources say Meat Loaf is ‘baffled.’” I say, “Shut the fuck up.” I say, “How dare you exist so far away from me?”
On the days there are only a few feet between us (which occur less often than both of us would like), mostly we just do our best not to think about airports.
I spent nearly twenty-five years of my life feeling unfulfilled by romantic partnerships and still writing love poems to people who didn’t deserve them. Today, Charlotte is having a bad day so I’m stealing her a poem.
I’m plucking it right out of the hands of someone I used to kiss and sitting it in her lap.
Charlotte,
You are the only person I know who spends as
much time screaming at the universe as I do, but
there’s a reason our star sign looks like a
wishbone. We both grab an end and hope for the
same thing every time we crack it. I love you, I love
you; let me do it for a little while longer.
WHEN THE BOY WHO SEXUALLY ASSAULTED ME TEXTS ME POLITELY TO LET ME KNOW HE’S BEEN READING MY POETRY
My first instinct is to text him back.
I know the proper response to the situation. The proper response is no response. The proper response is immediately blocking his number and maybe crying or writing a different kind of poem. I imagine I am expected to feel triggered; to curl in on myself and want to claw at the memory of him inside of me; to break, either expertly or angrily, depending on how traumatic I consider the speed with which I am able to recall the sound of his voice.
Instead, I borrow some aspirin from my roommate and drink a cold glass of water alone in my bedroom. I stare at his name in my phone and try to explain to myself why, after five years, it’s still there. Why, after five years, the most triggering things about the situation are hammocks and stargazing and not the boy texting me. I wonder if I’m still calling him a boy and not a man because man sounds too much like I’m placing blame somewhere. I wonder if I should start placing blame somewhere, but
the word rape gets shoved to the back of my throat and I never spit. It feels too much like a bullet and the last thing I want is more blood on my promising-date underwear.
See, it’s not that I question whether he did anything wrong, just whether he realized it. And I know the answer won’t change anything for me because the level of malice behind the intent doesn’t mean my hands will stop shaking when I’m in the car alone with somebody else. But I have to wonder whether there’s any shade of gray between perpetrator and victim in a society that teaches boys to take.
I’m sorry that this is the way my healing happened. Backwards. Sideways. In self-depreciating tumbles. It hasn’t always been newspaper article or Lifetime movie. It hasn’t always been clear or straightforward or proper. So yes: I think about texting him back.
I want to know which pieces he’s read. If he tries to sort through the love poems looking for his. If he skips the ones about men who have hurt me. If his stomach ever churns at the details. I want to know if he remembers that July. If he’s aware how much he ruined the season for me. If he knows that when the last person who broke my heart called me a summer girl, I flinched. I want to know if he sees himself reflected back in every poem about someone touching me with violence. If he can pick his hands out of the lineup. If he recognizes his own scent on the words.
I want to know if he’ll keep reading when the poems get less ambiguous.
TWO WEEKS IN THE SPARE ROOM OF A VERY PATIENT FRIEND’S LONDON APARTMENT, or A NUMBERED BREAKDOWN
1. I pack and unpack my suitcase twice a day.
2. I shave my legs for the first time in six months.
3. I curse at and apologize to the phone.
4. I ask strangers on Craigslist what they’d like
to do to me.
5. I cry into a mug of room temperature Coca-Cola.
6. I don’t write anything I need to write.
7. I practice holding my breath just to slow
everything down.
8. I call your love a poem and wait for it to end.
9. I check every flight from LHR to AUS.
10. I think about her mouth.
11. I think about her mouth.
12. I think about her mouth.
13. I think about your mouth.
14. I think about her mouth.
ON WRITING LOVE POEMS ABOUT MULTIPLE PEOPLE AND SHARING THEM ON THE INTERNET, WHERE THEY ARE INEVITABLY FOUND BY EVERYONE I DATE
Fuck the old love poems.
I keep them around as a reminder to do better.
I have written whole books for other people
but the quantity of poetry doesn’t measure the love,
just the hurt.
THE LAST PERSON WHO BROKE MY HEART CONSOLES ME WITH A POEM pt. 1
You don’t have to pretend anymore. It’s okay. You put on a very brave face but we both know that wanting me scared the shit out of you. It’s okay to feel relieved that we didn’t work out. It’s okay to cry because we didn’t work out and still feel relieved.
Look, I promise this wasn’t some big gr
and sign from the universe that you’re meant to be alone forever.
IMPERFECT POEM
IN WHICH
I BERATE MY BODY
who gave you
all this permission
to want?
YOUR EMAIL APOLOGY
DOESN’T MEAN SHIT
so
the poem
hurt you
it
was supposed
to
A SERIES OF POEMS ABOUT AIRPORTS
Poet Compares LAX to Hell (Again)
Crying in an Airport Bathroom and Then Telling the Internet About It
Gate C16, or I Know You Get Scared and You Run but You Can Always Come Home, You Can Come Home, Come Home
Delta Lost My Luggage and Still Treated Me Better Than You Did
BWI, LHR, GLA, KEF, LAX, SFO, MEL, AMS, LGA, ATL… or An Incomplete List of Airports I Have Been Emotionally Compromised In & Why
I Need a Plane Ride, I Need a Rain Coat, I Need and Need and Need and Need
In Which I Compare Our Love to Airplane Food
I Swear I’ll Stop Writing About Airports Eventually
I’m Never Going to Stop Fucking Writing About Airports
he is more dream than boy, so
I’m not sleeping very well.
PERSONAL REFLECTIONS ON GENDER
I used to think girl meant wilting like a rose in the palm of a man’s hand / but sometimes it just means thorn / and sometimes it just means wilting into my own hands / sometimes it means blue and elbow tattoos / lawn chairs and birch beer and lightly scented chapstick / sometimes it means being the knife / and the twisted ankle, bloodied lip / sometimes it means not being the poem or the poet / and choking on glitter / kissing someone else’s hair / playing jump rope with the binary / and politely or impolitely deconstructing boxes / skin tingling at the thought of being called a pretty boy / or a star cluster / sucking the dirt out from under your own nails just to taste where you came from / without ever having to go back there
OLD LOVE
I shake the crumbs of it
out of my sheets / everyone
tells me to stop eating
in bed.
20 LOVE LETTERS
after Jeanann Verlee
dear Taylor,
They say you never forget your first love.
I guess this is proof.
dear Matt,
I don’t know a thing about quiet desperation.
I’m sorry if I embarrassed you.
dear Eric,
Dodging this bullet
still makes me feel like one of
Charlie’s Angels.
dear Kevin,
You were a two-year experiment
in bad kissing and unwashed sheets.
dear Alyssa,
It took me an entire semester of art classes
to understand why I felt jealous of your teeth.
It was the rawest kind of wanting.
dear Garrett,
I said no.
dear Emily,
Emily.
dear Zach,
Your legs looked better in stockings than mine did
and I still haven’t forgiven you for it.
dear John,
You’re why I panic in locked cars.
dear Sean,
The paranoia that develops
after being even lightly stalked
never really goes away.
I’m still looking over my shoulder.
dear Emily,
I saved every letter.
dear Adam,
I was drunk.
dear Madison,
We were both drunk.
dear Dale,
I wanted to practice leaving someone
who didn’t care that I was leaving.
dear Johannes,
Letting you tie me up
was the closest I’ve come to commitment
in years.
dear Emily,
I’m sorry I missed the wedding.
I never got an invitation.
dear S,
You graffitied your name all over my heart
and then stood me up at the airport.
dear Ashe,
I’m not sorry for the poems.
dear Caitlyn,
If I never kiss anyone again,
you’ll be the last person my lips touched.
We both know I’m okay with that.
dear Emily,
I still don’t know what to say.
A FEW OF MY GLARING CHARACTER
FLAWS LAID OUT IN THIRD PERSON
JUST FOR KICKS
The poet is afraid to make any place feel too much like home because then she might have to stop running. The poet closes up in casual conversation because she can’t edit and redraft what comes out of her mouth. The poet writes almost exclusively about love even though she’s not sure it really exists. The poet emotionally tortures herself for art. The poet emotionally tortures other people for art. The poet is having some trouble making peace with privacy. The poet wrote a whole book about letting things go and still doesn’t know how to let a single thing go. The poet knows the exact taste of regret and never tries to wash it out of her mouth. The poet holds onto grudges until her fingers bleed. The poet is carrying too much around. The poet is stubborn, so stubborn, so fucking stubborn. The poet lusts after emotionally unavailable people because she doesn’t have to worry about commitment. The poet desperately wants commitment. The poet is desperate for acknowledgement and intimacy. The poet worries her flaws are mundane. The poet worries about the rent just like everyone else does, but she tries to make it poetic because she wants people to listen. The poet has no idea what she’ll do when people stop listening.
IN WHICH I MEET MY BROTHER’S STEADY GIRLFRIEND FOR THE FIRST TIME
(it wasn’t his girlfriend)
which is to say maybe I shouldn’t have waved,
which is to say it’s hard to watch him
make the same mistakes
I slander other men for and still
defend him,
which is to say I don’t regret that day at the bus stop
when I punched another kid in the face
for picking on him
but it worries me to think that
one day I might.
every dream I have about kissing you
ends with blood on my hands.
FACEBOOK SUGGESTED YOUR BOYFRIEND
AS A PERSON I MIGHT KNOW
and OK,
and ALL RIGHT,
so this is not traumatic.
Not like the way it suggested your friend’s rapist
or asked you to tag your dead dad in a photo.
This was a blip on the radar of other people’s pain.
I still cried.
I still wrote it down.
THE LAST PERSON WHO BROKE MY HEART CONSOLES ME WITH A POEM pt. 2
I know I placed a lot of blame on you there at the end
but it wasn’t all your fault
and I forgive you for the things that were.
If you need it,
I forgive you for whatever you need forgiveness for.
I know I have bigger problems
than who I’m not kissing right now
but three margaritas in,
I wonder how safe your number is
in my phone.
A BRIEF INTERLUDE
It’s been three years since I’ve spent
the night with someone who liked me
enough to get breakfast in the morning.
Still, I spread my heart thin like butter
on toast, hoping someone else will come
along and snatch it off my plate. Still, I
stumble half-dressed out of other people’s
apartments and treat myself to coffee on
the way home. This is not a poem that
seeks to make a spectacle of loneliness.
FRENCH FRIES AND OTHER
GREAT WAYS
TO EAT POTATOES
On the phone,
my mother laughs and says I might be
taking the starving artist thing a little too far.
I do not tell her about how I am Googling all the ways
I can eat russet potatoes without getting sick of them
because it’s only $3.99 for a five-pound bag,
or about how I am researching “ramen hacks”—
teaching myself
how to turn a ten cent bag of instant noodles
into a meal with leftovers
because this month I prioritized booze over food
and I still feel like it was worth it.
See, I don’t have mouths to feed
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