yeah, but did it really happen?

Dears, deers—

One reason I love poetry is that it has fewer rules than prose. I’m not talking rules about structure and syntax (tho that’s true too, unless you’re a die-hard formalist). What I’m talking about is that in poetry, you can blend the line between fiction and real life a lot more easily. You don’t have to declare that 100% of what you put in the poem really happened (to you, or anyone), nor do you have to say you made it all up. With prose, if you call it a memoir people get mad if they think you’re lying, and if you call it fiction there’s a whole bunch of different rules and you still get annoying people asking you how much of it is autobiographical. Maybe people do that with poems, too, but it seems to happen less often. Facts don’t matter as much as emotional resonance. Also, some things that seem unbelievable in prose are magical in poems.

For example: there is a house I drive past every weekday on the way to drop my older kid off at school. The house is drab, dingy, a little spooky. All the bushes out front are overgrown and gone to seed, or dead. Except right near the curb, there’s this single, beautiful rose. Not a rose bush with one rose on it, no, just one solitary rose growing near the curb. And it is perfect. It is the Platonic ideal of a rose.

You’re already disbelieving me, aren’t you? This sounds like an overwrought metaphor, but if I put it in a poem I could make you believe wholeheartedly in the existence of this rose. I swear it’s real, but bear with me, because it gets more unbelievable—the rose changes color. Some days it’s as ruby red as Marilyn Monroe’s lips. Other days it’s more pink, or more orange. And it glows. It must have its own internal light source, because no matter how gray or dull or rainy the day, the rose is luminous.

(That’s another thing that’s easier in a poem—using words like luminous. They sound a bit cheesy in prose, or in everyday conversation.)

Every time I pass the gloom-house with its glowing rose I have the profound desire to pull my car over and pick it, but I always keep driving. I have read enough fairy tales to know that picking luminous flowers from the gardens of strange houses is never a good idea.

Another thing that sounds a bit ridiculous in prose is this: years ago, I decided that my destiny was inextricably linked with the World/Inferno Friendship Society. Back then, I was kind of a mystical romantic lovesick dork, so that didn’t seem like such a weird thing to say. At my core, I’m still a mystical romantic lovesick dork, but back then I was less worried about coming across like one. (I was sort of a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, but things that were cute and quirky then, now that I’m pushing 40, just make me seem straight-up weird. What happens when an MPDG grows up? That might be a good theme for my next chapbook... Speaking of—that’s another reason I’m into poetry. It’s got room for the grown-up MPDGs and the mystical romantics.) Anyway, it seems my prophecy wasn’t wrong, as I am now publishing a three-volume set of books by one Aaron Hammes, member of World/Inferno. The first volume, Equal Parts Pumpkin & Punk, will be out at the end of the month.

—

What (else) I’ve been up to:

I have a new song recommendation up at Memoir Mixtapes, in which I reference both Nelson Algren and It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia and get hella sentimental, so it’s basically peak me. I have two new poems up at ISAcoustic—one of them, “forget the fuck away from me (origin stories of a safety pin girl)” is a contrapuntal and it’s the titular poem from one of my forthcoming chapbooks. Tomorrow night I’m doing a reading in Milwaukee, and if you are anywhere near Milwaukee, you should come on out. It’s the first event since June I haven’t had to back out of, I’m gonna be reading some of my new shit that I’m really stoked on, and I’ll have a few copies of forget the fuck away from me for sale—it won’t be available anywhere else for another month-ish! The reading is at Sherman Perk Coffee Shop at 6 pm.

What I’ve been into:

I’ve been reading: Welcome to Hell World, by Luke O’Neil. Horror Lives in the Body, by Megan Pillow Davis. Being the Murdered Babysitter, by Cathy Ulrich. Crowd Surfing With God, by Adrienne Novy. Stray City, by Chelsey Johnson. I’ve been listening to a lot of Mon Laferte, and the new self-titled album by Jake Shears.

Maybe I’ll see you tomorrow evening in Milwaukee. Maybe I’ll see you in the Halloween issue of Bone & Ink, which opens tomorrow. Maybe I’ll meet you someday, and we’ll tell each other our best unbelievable true stories. Until then, keep being mystical and lovesick, but don’t pick any glowing roses.

xoxo,
Jessie Lynn