Do you believe in the power of not listening
to the inside of your own head?
I believe in the power of you not listening
to the inside of your own head.
—Joshua Jennifer Espinoza
These five poems are up on the PEN America site today, and they are quiet / staring / not quiet / not quite /
I keep coming back to this linebreak:
Use words I don't have to go back
to college to understand.
I think it's the neat rhythmic package of "Use words I don't have to go back" like a well-shelved item—which feels complete even though it is a strange phrase by itself—suddenly shoved back into the realm of the not-strange, especially the realm of college, of academia, of sense-making. Use words I don't have to go back.