Today the world is a warm swimming pool.
I love walking into it, slowly, like I love
this yellow magnolia, which I have never seen
before. I didn’t know they made magnolias
in that color, or that Sylvester Stallone
wrote Rocky in three days, on a legal pad,
which was also yellow. I did not know
that by pretending to be a man whose luck
shifted seismically overnight, his own life
changed forever. I only knew about the scene
where he exits the ring, beaten half to death,
shouting the name of his love. I found that funny
as a kid. Now I’m not sure what I find funny.
I laugh when I see gore on the big screen,
and when I hear stories about people
throwing up. Blake laughs, sometimes,
when he’s afraid. We have both seen gore
in real life, but he knows what to do with it,
and I don’t. Knows terms like cannula
and butterfly needle. Knows how to use them,
in poems and on people. I never used to say
people’s names, in my poems — I tried once
and Louise said I could do without it. I can do
without a lot, but why deprive myself today,
when the sidewalk is yellow with petals, when
the sun is breathing in my ear. I will pretend
I know how to end this poem until I can see it
in my head, exactly. Sylvester. Rocky. Louise.
Magnolia. Blake. Blake. Blake.
***
Clare Flanagan is a Brooklyn-based poet, music writer, and night owl. Raised in Minnesota, she recently relocated from San Francisco to New York City, where she is a Wiley Birkhofer fellow at NYU. Her poems and reviews are published or forthcoming in Poetry Online, Pidgeonholes, OSU’s The Journal, and Treble Zine, among others. In her spare time, she enjoys reading, long-distance running, and listening to Charli XCX.
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image: MM Kaufman
Rejection Letters 