Category: Poetry
PTSD
Remember this smooth coffee, this crisp biscuit
It will never be without weevils or sand
If you manage to return, plan to walk your dog
It won’t matter where your foot lands
Driven Mad By Time
In this room I am suffocating
the walls, the desks, the floor, the boards
are all a varying shade of cream Continue reading
Something is wrong with this class
Something is wrong; I’ve discovered a terminal illness
That makes me sit in class with a death-like stillness
Leaving scars on my conscience; a limb must be severed
The remedy is bankrupt, despite my endeavors
Continue reading
Pillow talk
Schooling is not the same as education education - it is sacred. Here it is commodified - twisted, manipulated, thrown away with every spit bubble lazily popping at your mouth, every glazed over look you give your teacher Continue reading
Life is a real nailbiter
I don’t know why I’m not learning
that when your conscience is hurting
you can just go about turning
your cuticles into victims.
When your life is going off the rails
you take it out on your nails
the sad state that your violence assails
red, raw, and bitten.
Guest Post: The Conductor
You can best offensive man on the pitch
The best target man
You can have a thundering right leg
Blazing speed
And faultless technique
You are not alone: a monologue about college decisions
People are finding out about their colleges and
on one hand, I am so happy for them.
But at the same time, I want to rip my hair out
Because I have hallucinated 6 times today
Cruelly rejected myself 3 times and
Twice ecstatically accepted myself and
Once cold-bloodedly deferred myself.
Tomorrow seems to be a path with two forks in the road
leading in opposite directions.
A memory I never had: a poem about poems
I’m standing on a stage, and I feel a billion pairs of eyes staring intently and expectantly up at me.
I’m standing on a stage, and the whispers that float around in the downtime between acts fade into non-existence as I open my mouth.
I’m standing on a stage, and I’m not holding a guitar or sitting on a piano bench – it’s just me, in front of the microphone – no one knows what to expect.
Intense, like no other
Intense, like running a burned finger under cold tap water
Intense, like debating for 3 days straight
Intense, like the way you devote your life to something unconventional
knowing there are so many reasons for which it could fail, but holding on because of the one reason it might work out
Intense…is the way I feel about you. Continue reading
at night, my mind wanders
into uncharted territory
it trespasses onto private property
it tiptoes past safety guards protecting
enforcing a barrier between what i want to feel and what i need to feel Continue reading
Catherine Zhang 