2025.237

Summer Sonnet

I am the kind of girl who would still love you,

New York, even if you decided I had only a coffin

full of words left to say. I would clutch your blade

& ask Why do you not love me back?

Remind you I’ve paid my rent & then some

for god’s sake, I let you take me from behind

as I grunted like a salmon caught between rocks

as my sweaty back glistened in the sun because

I shall not divide your sorrow by seasons

& take off when it’s too hot to breathe or

treat you like a vacation like some others do.

Not to mention I always swallow

your damp inspiration

without even making a face.

---

This is a poem I wrote in the summer of 2024– it received an honorable mention for the Dan Veach Prize for Younger Poets by the Atlanta Review. An honorable mention means this poem did not win first place. Or second place. Or third. Or fourth. Or fifth. I’m only flaunting this year-old sonnet to ease my pain, knowing I’ve not written anything at all in 75 days. Elina Kumra, who won the prize, runs a project of opiate recovery through poetry. Think about your relative intentionality & nobility, whispers my ashamed & bruised ego.

Whatever Hilary Clinton must’ve felt while having sex with Bill after the Monica Lewinsky scandal, I felt towards everything I wrote. (If Bill and Hilary indeed had sex.) What did I mean when I wrote “your damp inspiration”? As a continuum of the oral sex metaphor, I decided on an abstract object being swallowed, which encompassed the sense of sweat & heat. But as I revisit this poem, “damp” is too plain an adjective to describe New York’s summer climate, & “inspiration” doesn’t feel like a concrete enough sentiment or phenomenon derived from the season. "Your damp inspiration” does roll off the tongue just right, but why do I trust my tongue. How could Hilary trust Bill after all that crap.

In all fairness, the intermittence in my writing was far from miserable. I visited Paris for the second time & did not let a single opportunity for a glass of wine slip away. I toured through a pleasurable David Hockney retrospective, & I fell in love with my boyfriend all over again when he shyly quoted a Keats poem as we sat on a tiny island on the Seine. If only I were as sincerely terse as he is generally, I could make girls cry every now & then with my fantastic collection of memorized poetry. At the end of the day, a truly original use of language is nearly impossible to achieve, but one’s ability to convey an original experience through words that have already sort of been spoken defines a worthwhile piece of writing.