Anonymous asked: I love all of you're poetry and am trying to expand upon my own skill set. Do you have any tips for poem writing?

Well, I am probably the worst person to ask this because lately my technique has sucked. I will literally open up a word document and state at it for a few days before I get anything worth keeping. It is more like pulling teeth than writing. I guess when I get really stuck I make a list of words I want to include, you know, words I find pretty or meaningful or just haven’t thought a lot about and then I make a poem around them. I also listen to a lot of random music, all different kinds, to get me in the mood to write. Just don’t listen to one song over and over again, or one artist over and over again because then all your writing will sound like them. I honestly read a lot of other writers to get inspiration. If they write something amazing that I love I get this zeal in me and I get hyper and think, “I want to do that! I want to make words feel like that!” Writing for me is kind of like giving blood. Sometimes the blood starts flowing right away but a lot of the time it is a bad stick and you have to wriggle the needle around a little or start on a new arm in order to hit the vein. I do a lot of rewriting and a LOT of backspace. Don’t be afraid to just mess around until you hit the vein and something good comes out of it. (Sorry about the giving blood metaphor, I donated blood last Tuesday at school.) Thanks for asking, I hope that helps a little. :)

1:24 am  •  28 May 2012  •  5 notes

once upon a time, the sun was our mother
and we were filled with sweat and dirt,
our feet stained bronze and golden

and once upon a time the blood in our veins
was as hot as volcanic ash, the kind that fell
from the sky like smoke when st. helens
gave herself over to plate tectonics and fury
and my teacher tasted fire on her tongue like snow

we are wolves
and we are lions
and we are eagles

and we are made of soldiers being pushed
out of warm wombs and into a universe
poised to strike like a snake, made of little girls
running through streets with sneakers that light up
with every step, made to think like princesses

(made to think like warriors
 when forced to fight for elbow room
 in a world where space is limited)

and some days I want to watch
my fire-taster feet roam
away from this northwest

and others I wish to stay close
to where the earth still hugs me
and skin still hugs ribs
and mothers still hug babies

while still tending the fire
and letting it smolder deep
to fill our nostrils, remind us
of where we have been and what we have been made

from, where our bones were forged
and our hearts made glassy and strong.

8:46 pm  •  27 May 2012  •  9 notes

sometimes I think about bones,
about your bones lying under your skin
like xylophone keys

and sometimes I think of the rain
and how someday I will move away and
miss the way it feels (like redemption)

and sometimes I think
about the way the earth slopes
like the rolling of a baby’s cheek
or the way a woman grows into her curves.

but well, well, well
I guess my roots grew in
when I was not looking

I guess we cannot be flighty
and distant forever, I cannot be
the planet jupiter forever, I cannot
pretend you mean nothing

with your hands the way hands should be
and xylophone bones, making music
the way some people creak (old already,
I swear they are all old already)

sometimes I think too much
altogether too much.

12:21 am  •  12 May 2012  •  11 notes

there was a whole flock
of mockingbirds
on my neighbor’s lawn

and you left a whole lot
of memories in the pockets
of my old sweatshirts

(I cannot shake you, I cannot shake you.)

and the moon was so large the other night
that my mother shook the sleep
from my eyes and told me to look

so large and orange, like a beach ball
leached of color and sent to space
by a boy with a good arm

or a tomboy girl playing hockey
with the boys, or an angry teenage girl
throwing rocks at god in the rain.

I wondered if you saw it, held it close
to your cheek and swallowed it
so you cold have a moon-belly
to lure me back to you

(I wondered if you thought about me, about me)

I wonder where the bees go in the rain,
I wonder where boys go after they have
broken girls’ hearts, I wonder where
trains go when they are not needed,
I wonder if I can go with them some day.

the mockingbirds
are singing
and the rain is starting
and
I am
thinking of
you.

10:07 pm  •  9 May 2012  •  14 notes

we went beyond the wheat fields
past where the mountain
sighed and went flat like
coca-cola left out too long on my bookshelf,

and my mother said it was beautiful
and took grainy pictures on her i-phone
while I pressed my face against the glass
and wondered what happened to
the people who wandered here.

the man at the sandwich shop
called me darling and we passed
a slow-dragging truck on a two-lane
piece of road because we were daring,
going seventy miles an hour, 214 miles to go.

(there were two police cars with their lights on
and on a side road I could see a crushed-beetle of
a car upside down with his wheels in the air, crushed
like a can of soda, and her mother and my mother said
that there was no way he could have survived that

so I clenched my fingers into my fist
and started praying
until we were far enough away
that I could no longer feel
his ghost pulling at my hair)

do the people who wander, wander on horses?
do they wander in cars filled with dirt
or wander with lungs filled with dust?

I said words like “empty” like “desolate”
but made sure to breathe the air (deep, deep) when
we got our hot chocolate at the rest stop.

8:59 pm  •  29 April 2012  •  18 notes

heart shaped sunglasses
and pink lemonade
sticky fingers
and sunburns
between the flip-flop lines
on my dirty, sun-soaked feet.

jesus was watching from
the windowpane, along with
bobble-heads collected
from basketball games

and we were flipping pennies
wondering when we would die
and if the gates to heaven would be pearly
or gold, and if they let people make out
and if god had a girlfriend (or maybe a
boyfriend)

and I was thinking about blue jeans
and long skirts
and knee socks
that cover up scrapes.

I was thinking about curly hair
and hang-nails and nooses and coat-racks.

summer smiles,
summer knuckles (bruised, purple like a night sky,)
summer, big gaping shaking smiles.

11:15 pm  •  17 April 2012  •  12 notes

and lately I have been growing
a thin layer of fat
between me and the world

like an egg
with a
full yolk

a baby girl
pressing herself into
a pillowcase

and I feel like hibernating,
like bears with full stomachs

and all my teachers
are pregnant and fat,
just waiting to pop pop pop

and all us students
are stoic and phony

and I am expanding
and sinking
like balloons
tied to anchors.

12:03 am  •  17 April 2012  •  13 notes

I think maybe if I lived in the desert
I would dry up and blow away,
would you be sad?

because the way the sand stuck between my toes
reminded me of moses walking for years and years
and the sun seemed larger than both of my clenched fists

and the city rose up short and
spread itself out like a worn afghan blanket
and people drove in cars instead of walking maybe,
maybe because they were tired of the heat, or maybe
just because they were tired.

(and I cannot talk about the grand canyon
and how it made me feel, how it stole the breath from my lungs
and made me feel like crying even though I was not sad.
beautiful things do that to me, the way the earth buckled
and the way I wanted so badly to leap off the ledge as if I truly
thought that god would catch me.)

everything is hot, hot, hot
and everyone is tanned and lean and quiet and
I snapped a picture of a cactus to send home to you.

I already miss the rain in my bones
and the damp, damp, dampness of everything

if I lived in the desert,
would I dry up and blow away,
would I be sad?

12:14 am  •  8 April 2012  •  12 notes

11:07 am  •  4 April 2012  •  3 notes