write this, effable and ineffable both

write this

emmer effer

a pretend genius broadsuction

some days are better than none

the message board

These Years, Lawn Furniture

Jennifer Givhan

She’s lying face down on the front lawn.

Do you think she’s all right?

I once punched myself repeatedly

in the arm. Some people cut themselves—

my teenage brother calls this “emo”—

Yes. I am emotional.

Here’s the thing, I’m at the top of my classes.

I recite Millay to my pillows.

Sensible, rational. Yes, but don’t you see?

I’m a witch, nevertheless.

Anne Sexton?

Oh yeah. I have been her kind.

I have too many things to say—

I want to write about the time I jumped on the

hood of your green truck, trying to keep you from

driving away for good—I might as well have been

the one behind the wheel for all the good it did me.

Is there still a dent? Does it match my own?

And the bruises on my arm.

People must have thought you gave them to me.

I guess that’s what I wanted them to think,

since the marks you left were never

visible, save behind my

midnight blue eyelids—perfectly

closed in front of company.

When I married another,

did you wonder what might have happened

if I’d never found those tickets in

your email in-box? The ones you said

you were saving for a surprise?

How ridiculous I am that

I still wonder, and have wondered

(years, years really!)

if those tickets were for me.

I recently heard that band on the radio—

I hadn’t remembered they sang that song.

I liked it, despite that it reminded me of you.

So what’s new?

I was lying on the front lawn because

I was sad. What’s wrong with that?

I’m a little older now. A little less prone

to jump on hoods,

to display the proof of my body.

I’ve covered myself in a fine layer

of don’t disturb me, I’m invisible fat.

And sadness

lays itself on the pages

of my poems.

***

Jennifer Suzanne Givhan is a Mexican-American poet who grew up in the Imperial Valley, a small, border community in the Southern California desert. Givhan earned her M.A. in English Literature at California State University Fullerton, where she was the recipient of the Graduate Equity Fellowship. Her poems have appeared in Verdad, Dash, Caesura, Mom Writer's Literary Magazine, Third Wednesday, Cutthroat, Pinyon, Earth's Daughters, Rockhurst Review, Palabra, Prick of the Spindle, and Mothering Magazine, and she was a 2010 recipient of the Emerging Voices Fellowship through PEN Center USA.

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