FEEL THE RAIN ON YOUR SKIN 🌧️

I’m just looking for someone to diverge & converge with

ohmygod this poem was inspired by so many things that happened last week! ONE: Larissa’s “Bonne nouvelle bitches 🍰” piece that made me want to get out my pink rhinestoned guillotine, TWO: a beautiful “Wine, Poetry & the Ex” convo hosted by Arvon between Morgan Parker & Rachel Long (so obsessed with them), THREE: this amazing article by Ayesha Khan (subscribe to their substack!), FOUR: the convo in our first “Poetry As Location” workshop, and FIVE: deep talks on my living room floor @ 2 am with the besties (iykyk) 🙃 ENJOY!

FEEL THE RAIN ON YOUR SKIN 🌧️

got too far ahead / too fast / & now / I’m never impressed / & always
fail-
ing 
behind is that cheugy? 
no longer using sex as self-harm karma
is just a club on the Jersey Shore 
& Normal People is just 
50 Shades of Grey for millennials 
44 billion on a bird 
can you believe 
Anna is shoving it 
in our faces this year 
& doing "Gilded Glamour"
with THIS wealth gap? 
guess a “tax the rich” dress 
wasn’t enough 
let’s storm the Met! 
& make dandelion wishes
with the ashes they burned 
it all down but we 
can rebuild anything 
I don’t pursue 
anymore b/c I don’t know 
what I want to take
another swig of that magic 
chemistry of intimacy 
is stopping 
to laugh at the same struggling 
dog braided bark 
I’m just looking for someone 
to diverge & converge with 
trait neutrality creativity requires 
novelty-seeking so don’t blame me 
for my dissociations 
are just me practicing my daydreaming 
& memory is just a fallacy selling 
solutions to the same problems 
they created the yassification 
of micro-dosing chaos 
into our everyday lives so why 
don’t we start by putting 
a poet laureate into every workplace?
am I haunting you? 
or are you haunting me? 
or is Taylor Swift haunting the both of us?
death of the chill ghost!!
hail satan 
I’m writing in my sleep again 
& trying not to self-isolate but 
you’re not always good 
for my nervous system & I know
how to play with my own 
emotions already anyway 
I don’t want the words 
to be the only ones 
who will choose me 
& drop 
a glass of water 
on my desk 
when I'm thirsty

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PTK VSA! MEET OUR FIRST “SQUATTER” 🏠

WE MEAN… “WRITER IN RESIDENCE”: WILHELMINA!!

Larissa & Kelly met Wilhelmina in our “Poetry As _____ A Workshop”. She was the first person to leave a brilliant, secret surprise poem in the comments of one of our first PTK pieces 🤫. So obviously, we had to invite her to come hang out with us! Wilhelmina is going to join in on this chaotic ping pong match of poems for the month of May & we’ll see how the rest unfolds so… GET YOUR INBOXES READY. In the meantime, get to know her, because she’s like, rly cool:

PTK: Hiii! Who are you??

W: I am a former high-potential young author 😅 selected in the Berliner Festspiele in 2001 and 2003. But refused to study literature, don't have a Masters of Fine Arts and regret it a bit today. Part of the poetry collective "The Invisible College“ led by Ariana Reines since early 2020. In everyday life I do something with data and live in Geneva while being a part-time surfer. I mostly write in English at @iamnewintown.

PTK: Describe yourself at age 13

W: In one sentence: On top of the world. 

The coolest guy in class was my boyfriend. He had the original elevator boys haircut/look. Yes. This was in 1996. 

My best friend and I lived only a few streets apart and we had bmx bikes. I guess I sort of was the leader of a bmx bike squad. All of us together would just spend the whole day at the beach. It was the longest summer. There was just no concept of time - days were endless. 

And then we moved to Germany, so that I could attend secondary school in a tiny provincial non-beach-adjacent town. People there my age were kids -and I felt like I wasn’t. 

Those kids also confused Bulgaria (where I came from) with Brasil. But I let them.

PTK: What does “un-precious poetry” mean to you?

W: Is this a trick question, PTK?  

Uhm, I don’t think there is such a thing as precious or "un-precious" poetry. But let me  give it a try still. In a good sense, "un-precious poetry“ to me is poetry which doesn’t take itself too serious. Doesn’t hide. Doesn't pretend. In the bad sense, “un-precious poetry“ is bad rhyme in the 21st century, is inspirational quote instagram posts - the fortune cookie of poetry. Is tell and no-show.

Footnote 1. 

What Marie Howe said:

"I ask my students every week to write 10 observations of the actual world.  It’s very hard for them… Just tell me what you saw this morning like in two lines.  No metaphor.  And to resist metaphor is very difficult because you have to actually endure the thing itself ....“ I love doing the 10 observations for Marie Howe. There is preciousness in that. And I’d call it “un-precious poetry".

There was Footnote 2 as well which I forgot.

PTK: Marry fuck kill - Karl Marx, Kim Kardashian, Daddy Bezos (and tell us why) 

W: Actually, this was easier than I thought. 

Marry: Daddy Bezos. For the divorce settlement money.🛥️🚀

Fuck: Kim Kardashian. Have you read her Vogue interview? That confidence as a 41 year old is just damn 🔥.

Kill: I guess staying true to my generational trauma, I’d have to say Karl Marx.

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Until next week, babies 😘