The Person and the Poet

by Meridith McKain
 Table of Contents

I - The Personal

The Vulnerability One

No Deeper Meaning
Do You Want the Uncomfortable Truth?
If I Were a Landscape
Cheers
Puzzle Masters Unite!
Translation Required
I am Siberia 
Poetry Isn’t My Platform
Nothing Clicks
Shedding my “old whore petticoats” 

II - The Poetic

Let Me Change the Subject to Poetry

An Angry and Informal Work
House Showing at 5:00 pm, Saturday February 31
Divinely Uninspired To Some Extent
What Happens When I Decide to Write a Poem
It’s a Metaphor
If it Sounds Like a Metaphor, it Probably is One
A Little Macabre for Your Wednesday
Make It Something It isn’t Already
Call it Desperate but in an Endearing Way
Can I get a melody please?

Acknowledgments
 I. The Personal

I am sick to death of this particular self. I want another.

- Virginia Wolf
The Vulnerability One

When you read a poem

It is comforting 
Don’t mistake that word 
To mean happy or warm
Or even pleasant
But inside a poem
You can find yourself
Or the truth
A kindred spirit 
Or a similar struggle

When I write a poem

I am at my most 
Uncomfortable
I don’t just write these words 
With my blood as the ink
I arrange my nerves
Into the shape of letters
I flatten out my soul
To use as paper
I fashion a pen
From one of my bones
And my heart is the ink well

And it’s okay if I don’t 

Strike a chord in your mind
If you read me and don’t 
Feel it deep inside
Really, I’ll survive
But please don’t throw me away
Don’t let me be forgotten
I accidentally put all of myself
Into this poem
No Deeper Meaning

We’re right on the cusp of summer

I can smell growth in the air
When I drive down the back roads
 – Which are littered among this small town of mine – 
There is green all around me and
I hear the crunch of gravel under the tires
And for this time 
For however long this drive lasts 
My mind is clear
I don’t carry that weight – 
You know the one
It’s just me and the road
And my knuckles wrapped lovingly
Around the steering wheel
Maybe the radio’s on but 
Maybe I’m listening to the Earth’s 
Mixtape

And it’s good.

Do You Want the Uncomfortable Truth?

If you want the uncomfortable truth

I’ll tell you that I’ve had my fair share of days
– more than I care to admit to myself –  
That my preference was to not be alive
But I lived through those days
I am alive now 
And there are a lot of things I am happy to experience 

Lightning bugs on a summer night 

make me love the dark when I’m used to fearing it 

The ocean is and always has been

a dear friend of mine

Driving every nowhere with my sisters 

because there is little else to do

Dinner on the couch with my parents 

while we watch reruns of Miami Vice 

Cold-nose kisses from my dog 

My favorite song played loud is 

palpable companionship

The smell of the farm where I work

Belly laughter with my friends 

Rhys. Who knows all the parts of me 

and still wants to daydream futures together

The smell of old books

My turquoise fountainpen

And about a million other things 

that make me overjoyed to say
I had those days

That make me thankful for past tense

To get to talk about them at all

Because the truth, the uncomfortable truth, is that I know a lot of people do not get to talk about
those days in the past tense, they cannot talk about them. It’s a cliche to say, “It's the little things
that make life worth living.” So I’ll say this: the little things are easy to miss, often overlooked
but if thought as steppingstones on the way to a happier tomorrow, the idea of tomorrow
becomes a little more bearable, which is still cliché but can also be true.
If I Were a Landscape

Hip bones are supposed to be seen

Collar bones too
The divot between them
And the dip between waist and ribs
The expanse from sternum
To pubic bone
A flat smooth surface

But not for me

I am made of hills and valleys 

One would need an all-terrain 
Vehicle to explore my body
Sprinkled cellulite across 
My legs like
Craters on the moon
Where I should not take 
Up space, I do

I have never had a love/hate

Relationship with my body.
Cheers

Here’s to whatever chemical process

Happens right before sleep
And here’s to all of the bad days

Here’s to the people that made me cry

And to the ones who made me laugh

Here’s to the times I could barely breathe 

And to long drives

Here’s to you, anxiety and insecurity

And to all the music that moves me

To the people who love me 

And the place I grew up
To the world around me 
And the books on my shelf 

To all of the people, places and things:

I raise my glass to you

Thanks for being my inspiration, 

The wind beneath my words
For all that you’ve given
(Knowingly or not)
Writer’s fuel can be expensive 
You make a girl feel special
Puzzle Masters Unite!

My mind is a Ziplock bag

Where someone has thrown their puzzle pieces 
 – and they had a lot of puzzles – 
I know there are complete images in here
But as I gather the pieces in my hands
Watching them sift through my fingers 
 – a mass of potential –  
I am tired of sorting puzzle pieces
I never would have picked this one 
The picture is ugly 

But it’s the only one I have found

With corner pieces
Translation Required

There is a golf ball in my throat 

Or is it a basketball?
And lava is leaking from my eyes
Even though I asked it nicely not to
My parents are telling me they love me
In that way that feels a lot like finding fault

Am I enough

Steam is coming out of my ears again

Maybe it’s brain smog?
Because my parents are telling me 
They want the best for me
In the way that implies I am far from the best

Am I enough
Am I enough
Am I enough

My whole body is on fire now

The white-hot kind like too hot bath water
Because my parents are telling me – 

Am I enough
Am I enough
Am I enough
Am I enough
Am I enough
Am I enough
Am I enough
Am I enough
Am I enough
Am I enough

I’m not sure what it’s called

The part of your brain that allows for
Proper interpretation when someone speaks
But I was born without it 
I am Siberia 

         “Siberia is vast and sparse.”

            “The climate of Siberia varies dramatically.”
            “…brutally, cold winters.”
- from the Wikipedia entry on “Siberia”

Tonight I am Siberia
But if I am honest
I have always been Siberia.

Somedays I want to be an island

Somedays I can even believe I am an island
I am Fiji, or St. Kitts, 
I am warm and happy
I am adrift in the South Pacific 
I am where people dream about being – 
They want me.

Sometimes I think I am where I grew up

I am a tucked away corner of West Virginia 
            I am landlocked 
I am population-poor 
My seasons are mercurial. 
The people who know me have always known me.
Most cannot wait to get away.

Tonight I am Siberia
A vast expanse of desolate land
Largely uninhabitable
Harsh and cold – 
Biting back at those who stray
Into my barren landscape.
I am a frost-bitten coast reaching toward an unforgiving ocean.
I am a country the depths of which remain unknown even to me. 

Tonight I am Siberia
But if I am honest
I have always been Siberia.
Poetry isn’t My Platform

They say write what you know

Here is what I have so far:
I know Hemingway, and Dickinson, and Bradstreet, and Poe
I know Atwood, and Elliot, and Carrol, and Frost
I know pain and destruction
I know loss and have hosted grief through the night
I know doubt and great insecurity

How do I write that?

How do I write like the Greats?
Cleverly, and discrete, subtly perhaps
I think poetry is the game of clever, subtle people,
Beautifully worded
Patiently feeling
People

My feelings are loud and demanding

I am brash
I am neither clever, nor discrete, least of all subtle
My circular thoughts
And hexagonal feelings
Do not fit
Into this craft’s square hole
These
short
clipped
stanzas
Are restricting

Now I’m wondering if poetry

Isn’t my platform –
Maybe I’ll try short stories
Nothing Clicks

I am swear wording sick 

holy swear words I’m sick 
of college and growing up 
and “the real world”

you know that Adam Sandler movie 

Click what I wouldn’t give 
for the ability to pause the world 

people love to say life’s too short, but 

you know what they don’t tell you:
it’s swear word expensive too! 
makes me sick.

if I want to enjoy this short life I have 

I have to spend precious time 
doing something I hate
I have to get a job so
I have money 
to spend my precious few vacation days 
doing what I actually wanted the whole time

Think about for more than 30 seconds 

and tell me you don’t want to flush your head 
in a toilet or run screaming into the ocean 
with all your clothes on. 
Sickening.
Shedding my “old whore petticoats” 

For Plath, Sexton, Levertov, Rich and all the other women 
before me who paved the way for my self-definition.

Doppelganger doppelganger
Wherefore art thou,
Doppelganger 
Gather yourself around me now
Come close
Inimical burden on my back
Third eye of clarity
Beat your black wings against my heart
I am going to need you for this 

I have fought, raged even

Against you for some time
Tried to create while keeping
You locked behind closed eyes
But looking at myself in the mirror
I can see you 
I know that if I want to be great at this
If I want to write the truth
I will need you 

My eyes are open 

My hands are yours
Meridith is locked away now
– Call it a metaphorical possession – 
Write what she couldn’t and do your worst
 II. The Poetic

The voice in my head said,

“Whether you love what you love or live in divided ceaseless revolt against it, what you love is
your fate.”

- Frank Bidart
Let Me Change the Subject to Poetry

and since we’re on the subject, 

Lewis Carol’s “Jabberwocky” was the first poem I ever loved 
and the irony is not lost on me 
that the whole poem is about the cyclical nature of struggle; 

my whole life is grabbing my vorpal sword and

slaying one jabberwocky after another 
and even when I find success when I kill the stupid thing, 
another one comes galumphing around the tumtum tree. 
What a crock.

If I let myself think about societal convention for too long, I am so far down 
the rabbit hole I would have to yell up 30,000 feet for Alice to hear me.
An Angry and Informal Work

In writing, you tell me

“Show don’t tell”
Fuck
I hate that.
Like, deep in my stomach
A churning anger.
I hate it.
Like, why can’t I do both?
Why can’t I just tell you I often feel that I will never be more than okay at anything I try.

You might say

“You can’t have your cake
And eat it too”
But I disagree:
If I have a whole cake
And only eat 1 slice
I have and have eaten.
One time I wanted to go visit my cousin at the beach, but I didn’t want to spend my
money, so I stole my dad’s credit card and spent his.

I just think that 

Telling is my showing
What is the point of
Words, if not to
Tell a something?
I’ll tell you something: I once got so mad at my sister that I poured all of her expensive
shampoo down the shower drain.

Would there not

Be some relief
In reading a poem 
And knowing exactly 
What the hell was 
Being told?

Poetry, O poetry
Mine art of love
Mine art of hate
Mine art that I love to hate 

You say 
“Show don’t tell”
But you know what
It’s. My. Poem
And I’ll write what
And how, I want
. . . 
Was that good?
House Showing at 5:00 pm, Saturday February 31

From the outside it looks quite pretty

Rhyme scheme is blooming beautifully
In the front yard
Periods and commas mark the path
To the front door, but watch your step
The semicolon wobbles

Come on in, there’s lots to see 

But take off your shoes please,
Wouldn’t want to track in dirt
From your life into my poem

Inside, to your right is metaphor 

A large and cozy room
Where most people gather
Right behind that is simile
As small as a closet but
Still a respectable space
There’s some room in allegory
But the furniture creaks
Upstairs is meter, iambic and such
Most people don’t go up there – 
Say the steps are too much!

What’s that you ask?

Oh the door to the basement
No you can’t go down there
See it isn’t finished yet
And it’s a bit of a secret
Down there is all of the ugly
Broken dreams
Out of date doubts
A shattered heart or two
Absolutely wretched comparisons 
Questions scratch and scurry across the floor
Plus it’s cold and damp and dark

Best to stay out of the basement

I understand you’d like to see
But this is my house
I built it for me 
Divinely Uninspired To Some Extent

I am uninspired
And wondering how that could be
In a world with 7 billion plus people
With stories and cultures
  With children and jokes
With backyards and talents
How could I be uninspired

In a world where music and art

And ice cream exists
How could I be uninspired

In a body that houses several

Actively functioning machines
In a body with a brain capable of more
Emotion than I know how to handle
How could I be uninspired

With a heart that has the capacity to

– well I'll find out the extent of this later
How could I be uninspired

Do I find myself without the words

Or rather, with the words
But without the instructions
For how they are meant to be arranged
What Happens When I Decide to Write a Poem

I never doubt my abilities

I understand poetry better than most
Like how I know that a scalding hot bowl of soup is just as beautiful a metaphor
as a fresh-bloomed flower.

I am not a fraud, who couldn’t tell you 

Why people like what I write
Like a blind man trying to describe a color he has never actually seen, to a deaf 
man who can’t hear him anyway.

I do this intentionally
(I think)
Sitting at my desk
a pen in hand.
(Maybe a pencil would be better?)
I will write these words
(Just the right words)
In the right order
(I must apply order)
And I will do it on purpose
(I will write the right words on purpose.)

In the right order.

On the right side of my room,
my desk a right angle.

On purpose.
Because I know how.

Because I know how – I do

alright. I am writer after all!
I write right things right
Not right things wrong
Or wrong things right

I right good things on purpose 

With purpose for a reason and the reason is reason because I am reasonable and can
Can know how to write right things good and well

And well

I am a writer
Write
Right?
It’s a Metaphor

The winds of change are really blowing now

Bending the grass in half 
And the powerlines swing like jump ropes
The ground rumbles
The thunder is shaking life up
And the rain
The rain is coming down hard and fast
Each drop a kamikaze of life 
For things that grow

This storm is a force

The take no prisoners kind
And I
Standing in the middle of it
Fight the urge to brace for what comes next
Go limp in surrender and embrace 
Chaos
If it Sounds Like a Metaphor, it Probably is One

My family has this strange habit

Of playing chicken when it comes to
Taking the trash out 
We let it pile up 
Higher and higher
And then just push it down
So the bag is stretched 
Thinner and thinner

Why

Taking out the trash is not hard

Or time consuming
And the trash can could use a break
A Little Macabre for Your Wednesday

I walk into a poem and

And walk out someone else.
– Nayyirah Waheed 

I believe in poems as I do haunted houses. 

We say, someone must have died here.
– Rosa Alcalá

Both are true, but

Find what you love and let it kill you.

– Charles Bukowski

And I believe it just might.

I believe there is darkness here

To poetry, this art, this craft 
That still asks, screams, begs for more
I have made a monster
Poetry is inside me now
It lives in me – off of me
“Give me more”
I have written myself into oblivion
I fear one day the well will be empty – 
And still I will wring myself out
Like a damp wash cloth
“Just one more”
Until I have no choice but to write
The thing I avoid 
The creature that lurks in the 
Deepest recesses of my consciousness 
Is not easily satisfied
And certainly cares not for me
It asks for too much
Until all I have left is 
A poem I want to write 
But don’t 
I truth I should I acknowledge 
But won’t
Make It Something It isn’t Already

I have to keep writing

And all I have are my feelings about 
– rejection – 

I submitted for publishing

Mr. Somebody said,
“Unfortunately they aren’t for us”
Like it was out of his control 
And I handled it well
I did not cry
But I did accidentally wander
Into a black hole of insecurity
But don’t worry
I’ve been here before

I have always been a selfish poet

And I don’t see why that should change now

Jeremy says:
Make it make sense
And give it more imagery
Tell the hard truth
And don’t be depreciating
Break the fourth wall here
But not here
Make this one more
This one needs less
Make it nonsense

And I do
Well I try to do but
It still isn’t write
Or right

So I tried and tried

and here’s my new poem
dedicated to Mr. Somebody and Jeremy:

“Writing is a strange kind of art

A break your heart kind of art
A describe a fart kind of art”
Call it Desperate but in an Endearing Way

I think a lot about all of these:

that I’m untested as a writer
that I have no new ideas to offer
the idea of no one caring what I have to say
and fear and fear and insecurity and fear
That I have and experience 

I wish I was better 

At writing all of my brain detritus 
I write some 
I write the more palatable parts
I’m trying to be more diligent

Mostly I think about 

How my words will age
If one day I find my words on physical pages
If one day my name is followed by “New York Times Best Seller”

Will someone suddenly care

To read the poems I wrote in middle school
About “won’t someone please like like me?!”

When I’m gone

Will all of my words disappear 
Taken out back with the rest of 
The trash I left on my desk

How many diaries and letters

Are treasured because they offer
A few more words from beloved writers

But those are still just words

Really no different than mine

Will someone 
Please 
Care about my words
Even if it is only deciding 
What to put on my epitaph
Can I get a melody please?

Sometimes I wish I had picked 

A different medium 
With which to sell my soul
Offering my closest guarded secrets to a devil no longer capable of being
surprised and running a business that operates on shock value.
Sometimes I find the words
Restricting and I wish I was 
A different kind of artist 
Like a musician, who has sound
To aid in their storytelling

This is a one-dimensional kind of art

I have to do all the work
If I want a sound to be heard
I have to write it 
If I want a picture in the reader’s mind
I have to build it
And my only material is words
Always 
Words words words words

Where is my belted-out chorus?

Where are my backup singers?
Where is the swell of music at just the right time?

Sometimes I just wish I had a gong

So I could finish with a bang
Instead of having to write the endings for my poems

[GONG CRASH]
Acknowledgments

“Poetry isn’t My Platform” was featured in Pulse magazine

Biography

Meridith is an English Literature major at Marietta College. She is working daily to shelve
insecurities and become a better writer. Her poetry was featured in Pulse magazine, and she is
the recipient of the MC Poetry Fellowship, which included a $500 prize and an eight-week
workshop. Follow her on Instagram @itsmemeridith.