ASPIRATIONAL by
ADELINE SWARTZENDRUBER
September 23 2024My summer aspirational vibe is coming together quite nicely
on my Pinterest moodboard, but unfortunately I am running out of summer and running out of steam.
My summer aspirational vibe is
Lana Del Rey with cursive Nabokav Whitman tattoo
My summer aspirational vibe is
the Ginsberg and Bukowski in his bedroom, evidence of
an undergrad girl’s presence, it’s the ecstatic glimmer in virgin irises
scanning pages, Blake’s revelations, suddenly resolute
in the desire to write poems that work like music,
the individual word’s meaning irrelevant
in the sea of rhythm and sound.
A poem that is functionally like touching grass…
My summer aspirational vibe involves images of fireworks,
My summer aspirational vibe is
Brilliant immediate and neon
The reality is more staring blankly at the blinding sky from my bed
sweating out the love affairs. The reality is a pervasive scent of decay
not unlike that found in dumpsters behind cheap chain restaurants
where food is deemed better rotting than in the mouths of street urchins. The reality is I’m swilling bourbon like a hobo in the nineteen-thirties,
with no fake ID (because if you really want it, you’ll find a way),
The reality is I’m losing the tug of war with myself.
The reality is I only go outside to go to readings and every reading is bad. The culture war is over, we’ve finally reached a bipartisan agreement:
All poetry should be scatalogical in nature, and short enough to post
I’ll try to fall in line, write a downtown-style
cum-stained poem. Here it goes;
I wrote,
“I swallowed something from inside you.” —
But God, no, that’s too on the nose.
How long can I do this? How long can I trick me with poetry,
Before I really taste the salty thing in my mouth and want
to spit you out?
There are poems that haunt me and most of them are not about love. What’s the line?
“I am too pure for you or for anyone.”
Plath seethes, “Your body hurts me
As the world hurts God.”
I reach inside me searching blindly for the evil and find only bile.
This relentless heaving could tear through my esophagus killing me at any moment and I imagine the Kingdom of Heaven collapsing under
acid rain which doesn’t douse the flames below. My room is going to boil me alive stewing in my own miasma if nothing else gets to me first. Here on this bed, the farce of ruffled white blankets and pink sheets, I could write about bombs falling, a litany of decimated churches in my periphery, instead I play pretend. I write love poetry.
It’s a game, a practice exercise, like trying
to write a story without the letter E. It’s a game I’m playing,
trying to write the same tired pain into something holy.
I’m more than a zoo animal,
Fucking and eating and dancing around for attention,
I’ve got something pure in me still,
I promise, there’s a light and I swallowed it—
It’s shining out of me like a fiery beacon,
the last lighthouse on an angry sea
calling God to come home.
Adeline Swartzendruber is an actress and writer living in Brooklyn. Her work can also be found in Expat. Her life isn’t really happening to her, it’s just a story she’s telling.