untitled ars poetica, image from NASA/JPL-Caltech/Dan Goods, "First TV Image of Mars (Hand Colored)", poem by sby

[Text: Thinking I could exorcise the heavy core of it, I sat down to write a poem on the topic. I do not know how many words I have left to write around it. The only way out is through. Could I, given the grace, go into the mirror maze and find the other side? As it stands, I am in one of many dead ends, passionately disrobing my own reflection.]

everything leaves a hole (sby, august 2023)

[Text: Everything Leaves a Hole

It still feels like a summer and there's something about the smell

that turns me apprehensive. I love summer like I love,

whole in my heart. Sunscreen-smell like an old blanket,

smells like good. And I walk through through the trees and it

smells good. Smells like good green, like trees, and it leaves a

hole in my heart.

I put my hand in there to fiddle with the pieces

rattling & rolling around; I try to mend some of that.

Pulling strings like weaving. But the attention turns it into a mouth

and it bites - it bites my hand! - and I bleed.

It draws blood and it swallows the blood

which is OK because that is where blood even goes.

I grow around my heart while it

grows inside me so anyway we stay the same.]

being an afterthought: an erasure poem of a caterpillar that eats tortoise shells by deyrup, deyrup, eisner and eisner (linked here) (original text under the cut), sby march 2024

[Text: Being An Afterthought Realizing that plight of an oddity such as this little moth calling attention to existence worth knowing Does not Does not ultimately prove applicable]

[Text: On Being Endangered: An Afterthought Realizing that a species is imperiled has broad connotations, given that it tells us something about the plight of nature itself. It reminds us of the need to implement conservation measures and to protect the region of which the species is a part. But aside from the broader picture, species have intrinsic worth and are deserving of preservation. Surely an oddity such as C. vicinella cannot simply be allowed to vanish. We should speak up on behalf of this little moth, not only because by so doing we would bolster conservation efforts now underway in Florida, but because we would be calling attention to the existence of a species that is so infinitely worth knowing. But is quaintness all that can be said on behalf of this moth? Does this insect not have hidden value beyond its overt appeal? Does not its silk and glue add, potentially, to its worth? Could these products not be unique in ways that could ultimately prove applicable?]

excerpt originally seen in a post by @great-and-small! linked here

dawn yes crying gold, a golden shovel after lisa marie basile (sby, feb 2024)

[Text: Put it as such — have mourning for the end of a night. Waste the moon away, try to discard of all the connotation of song.   A person (or – or! – a girl) with telling or telling without such terrible, ruinous ambition, with such  and such, with graveside rumination.

Do not grieve what I learned first and last in lesson.   I could/should learn to be an am from the broken skin of nails obsessive.

On the break of morning sun, I find  that darkness-unholding, that light-which-can-contain; ah, but in truth find nothing.   no, yes, well, no, but yes, maybe yes, find nothing in the endless song’s replay.

Well… I confess/don’t think I ever will be “am.” In the shower at the break of morning sun, blood drips down my face and I wash the blood away. Oh and long to finally turn off the replay.

Key of contents: The running water; the second wind; the keeping (close to my chest) the who that I; then finally, there is no am. Believe what grief you please. Or don’t. I have not yet gone where chariots go.]

untitled (sby, march 2024)

[Text: My childhood bleeds through me like dark ink on cheap paper. Long ago someone put their pen to the page and started writing a person,pressing down hard into the skin canvas, writing a story. A needle drags its way through, binding these pages together, threaded with blood and ink and blood. I am nothing but an imaginary girl,made up as an object of desire. I am nothing if not small and laced with stillness. The bleeding puncture that spells out a name. The blemished skin. The hidden parts. The blisters still covered with bandaids and secrets, buried with the memory. Every day it rears its ugly head and I shush the thing to silence and push it back under the covers where it can learn to be afraid and quiet.]

mundanity of need (sby, january 2024)

Text: Have you ever been sad at the grocery store? I think of myself sometimes as drowning. The perpetual sea of poems swim in my head instead of words or thought or action. I run out of words quite often, actually, but I don’t run out of poems. Occasionally, I lie in bed at night and shake with the force of them. I have been speaking so much of desire — desiring, desired, object of, heady with — that perhaps what I am saying is the symptom of endless waitingness. I am taken with this, taken with this; this inaction. Instead of ending it, I vomit poems in the sink and buy my cereal and distilled water at the self checkout lane.

untitled love poem (sby, jan 2024)

[Text: do you think that the world is small when you hold it in your hands/or are you bigger than it all?

maybe neither.

maybe by holding the world in your hands/you are an extension of the world,/and just because you could flatten it beneath your palms/doesn't mean you would./mutually assured destruction could be alluring. could.

but seeing that little blue spec, floating there in that finite void, doesn't it make your heart say

"oh"?

doesn't it make your bones sigh?

the earth doesn't twinkle,/and perhaps that's where ground gained it's reputation of being steadfast./stars will come and go. the earth sings, "i love you,/i love you,/i love you."]

december blue early (SBY, december 2023)

[Text, in all caps: I kill myself via inaction and then find myself awake on a Saturday morning while snow falls unthinkingly to melt on the pavement outside and I look at my sweaty and god-given palms and wonder what a strange and terrible blessing it is to be alive.]

Nov 10th — “Character poem”

Sorry, did I scare you? Did I make too many empty promises? Keep a piece of my brains on your lapel and go home a widow.

Nov 11th — “Odd poem”

My  favorite numbers are  all odd numbers. 19 and 31 and 67 and other children who  aren’t loved. I keep them in my heart because  no one else will. There’s an elegance to having a center.

PAD Chapbook challenge #10&11

magnet poem - nov. 20th

did I envy you wild farewell

after all you walk us by death

or are you wanting too

Nov 8th — “Sentence poem”

After Richard Brautigan

He feels awful; I don’t love him and I pace around my room like a bullet who has just finished assassinating the president.

PAD Chapbook challenge #8

Nov 7th — “Big poem/small poem”

i. Blistering summer heat meant that the cold pool was a relief on our skin, even though the cold would have been unwelcome any other time. When I met you I was desperate for approval. When I met you I was desperate for a friend. When we met I was arms-crossed and vacant-staring. You touch my arm and I held back the flinch because I needed you. Because I needed to feel wanted. Years later you will leave me at the wayside, pretty faced, grown up. ii. When I met you I was desperate.

PAD Chapbook challenge #7

Nov 3rd — “Problem poem”

Trying to fit a piece of sheet rock  in where it belongs: take an exacto knife  and shave away pieces  of the wall above it. Dry wall snows to the ground, hurricane of particulates filling the room. It still won’t fit; take the grater and make it smaller. Make it smaller until it fits. Cut down something else until it fits.

November 4th — “Catching poem”

A long fish wire with a hook at the end– not to say you aren’t cut free from the net. You are hooked through your cheek, though, keeping you grounded to me. Kite-like, holding you tight as you soar, tethered.

PAD Chapbook challenge #3&4

Nov 1st — “Declaration poem”

Today is Wednesday,  and it is one of those sunny-cold days in November  that foretells sorrow. Birds are murmuring dangerously low over the highway. The sky says it all: the blinding sun,  the snow-white clouds, the biting air. But today it is Wednesday. And sunny, and I am in love with the world.

PAD Chapbook challenge #1

we've been doing sonnets in my forms of poetry class and the unit is about to come to an end so i though id play a bit with 14 line structure. im not so sure this comes across as a declaration but im happy with the feeling it conveys and the volta, even if contrived

Read my piece on Braided Way Magazine! I'm so excited and honored to have this piece published. Please enjoy.

HOLD ME, HAND. a handmade Renchanting zine by me! Transcripts, and image descriptions under the cut. Experience it on my website! (Transcripts inline on there.)

Pictured is the cover and back cover of the zine. The back cover is the same style scribbled black vertical line, but less dense, and with a streak of red scribbled lines towards the top half of the page.

Page 1 and 2 of the zine. On the left, the page behind the cover, has a crude drawing of the Dogwarts banner in red pen. It is an almost fully red banner with three white triangles at the bottom edge. The text on the side of the page, written along the side edge, says “a hand made Renchanting zine by SBY.” Renchanting is in red text, as is SBY. SBY is circled like a signature. On page two, there is a poem, titled “how it ends”, aligned left, in plain black text. It says; Let’s try this again: You go into fruitless labor for fruitless/business for fruitless prizes in fruitless/games. No winning here, there is none./I know that. I see it. I’ve seen it all ahead/of time, I see it clearly now. Play/stupid games, play stupid pretend. No/winning. I know. But this time I’ll play along, stupid games./This time, I’ll climb up the hill and see/you there, and walk the other/way. I’ll know better. I’ll leave you to it. A gentle/nod. Magic can’t save us, in the end./Love can’t mean anything if I know -how it ends.

Pages 3 and 4 of the zine. On the left page, page 3, is a poem written diagonally down the page. Once in black, then repeated in red. It is titled “on you.”/”(on you)” and the title is both on top and on the bottom of the poem to be read with the rest. The poem reads, “on you. drawn to you like gravity draws the axe to meet its mark (on you). drawn to you like gravity draws the axe to meet its mark” On page 4, on the right, is a sketchy drawing of a handaxe, colored in slightly with blue pen and red hearts scribbled around the sharp end of the axe instead of blood. On the handle, all caps cut off text reads, “Red winter is-”

Pages 5 and 6 of the zine are in all black ink. This is a two page spread of a poem titled “puppy love”. The title is horizontal down the middle spine. On the bottom half, under the large block of poem text, is drawn the roots and trunk of a tree. On the top half, on the right page, above the text, is drawn the top half of the same tree. The text on the left reads, “I don’t fully understand what it is/about you that makes me want to/run and hide under the tall dark/oaks. Something about you makes/me scared like a child, not devoted/to some thing or another. Or another/thing. I don’t fully understand what/it is that makes my heart tug and/beat when someone else is near you./Like something or another, pulling/me closer.” The text on the bottom half of page 6 reads, “I don’t need to understand what it is/about you that makes me want to put the/wooden handle in your firm calloused hands./The hands I held in mine, planting row/after row of garden in the soil in/front of the shack your calloused hands/helped build, behind the walls your hands/helped me build. I feel it too. So I’m/putting this in your hands, now."

Pages 7 and 8 of the zine. On the right is a crude drawing of a red crescent moon with three black birds in front of it. On the right is a poem titled, “be still, be ready (steady)”. The title is written vertically on the middle spine again. In red pen, complementing the black ink text of the poem is a scribbled red cloud and red snowflakes. The poem reads: and with the palpitations in/my throat i finally/understood what it would/feel like to eat a/heart while it was still/beating. i’m holding your heart in my hands/and swallowing it whole./you asked me to, and now i am, i’m/swallowing you whole.

Pages 9 and 10 are a mostly white page space two page spread of black lowercase text, that simply reads, very spread out, on a top left to bottom right diagonal, “oh./i understand,/now.”

Pages 11 and 12 of the zine are the first part of a four page spread of one poem meant to be read from left to right ignoring the middle spine. There is a long arrow at the cutoff at the end of the page, indicating that the poem continues. It is in black ink and says; The wagon jumps --- not for joy. Executioner’s boots squeal/at the same frequency of the damn wheels creak. The same joy/peverted [sic]. I never understood an axe until I became one./Sharpen me,/deep repetitive motion, make me feel/good. How I touch/the scar around your neck and know/I made it --- mine, mine. I smell bile/feel it in my throat too, and/I look up to see one of the men,/big and strong framed/an ox/of a man and gentle like one Pages 13 and 14, continuing the 4 page spread. The rest of the text says; has thrown up onto the road. Leaving it/pieces of him in our wake. I don’t throw up/even if I feel like/I left myself somewhere else. Becoming the axe, becoming the axe. Long road home/to take it back. Bury me/in someone else’s/hand. The title of the poem is revealed on the bottom right of the last page; “Long Live the King”. Above it is a drawing of an open eye and a closed eye in red ink.

i am covered in blood., SBY, july 2022

[Text: there is blood soaked into the sand,/soaked deep into the hot, shifting earth,/and there is a silence even deeper.

this is to say i wish i never met you.

not that i didn't love you,/that i don't love you,/because you know that i did./i do./i will.

but god has tested me/and the reality of the situation is/i am covered in blood/that is very much not my own.

you would have something to say./because you always have something to say,/and i would pretend it wasn't funny./and you would laugh. and i would laugh,/because i couldn't help it. /after all, your best quality is your words./it's what's kept you alive so long,/even if you insist i deserve credit for that.

i don't. not really.

(title) i am covered in blood. (end title) (end Text)]