"There’s an awful lot of pressure involved in sending out poetry during National Poetry Month. Perhaps it’s because I assume that thousands and thousands more poets are sending out their writing this month more than any other month, and the thought of that level of competition frankly scares the crap out of me. Writing is a competitive enough sport as it is, and I’m not a particularly competitive person."
-While Holly Day did not send in a formal bio or photo, I found her cover letter worthy of attaching as a reflection of April being "National Poetry Month."
I'm not much for competitive sports, anyway. Enjoy her poems! -Russell
I Hold Your Big Fat Heart In My Hands
Extinguish the joy in my heart, my head, tonight
I open my body to you like a dependant cripple
Supine, sublime, sometimes I wonder what we’re doing here, and
Then I realize how little I actually want to know the
Truth. Your hands push against me like rough, angry starfish
Press my starlight thoughts of you in between pages of Hitler
Some leather-bound book filled with piles of crushed leaves. In
Time, I just know we could become friends, the emotional cripple
The raging lunatic. I chose to be the weaker of the two of us, and
It has nothing to do with you, not really. The
Closest thing I’ve come to love like this is this, tidepool starfish
Wrestling for pieces of meat, so slow like Hitler
Decomposing beneath heaps of garbage and dirt. You let me in
Last night, and just because I let you touch me then doesn’t mean I have to tonight.
And even though we’ve settled into this domesticity, there will always be the
Images I have of you, unflattering. Hitler hands starfish out against me, touch my backside--
If I let you in again tonight
Will you cripple me further still?
I Deny You
all this talk of reconciliation
and all I see is the back of your head
how I want so bad to pick up a hammer
and smack it into the small round
bald spot growing there.
I can feel the fire balling up
in my middle, billowing out
until I can touch it with my palms
how easy it would be to take
this boulder of tangible anger
smash it down on you
make you flat and small.
I’d Help, But I’m Not Really Here
she says, do nothing
and I’ll make it all right
be quiet and no one will know.
I am a statute in her shadow, I am
a monument to quiet, she will fix everything and
I have no need to move.
she says, say nothing
tell no one, you didn’t see
she says, go back to sleep, I’ll be back
in the morning
I am a monument to shadows, to quiet
So still I don’t even look like Alive
I am a statute of I didn’t see
these memories of dying even as they are born
