Three Poems by Megan Wildhood

 

Unexploded

walk asphalt veins

of sweltering, sedulous city

wonder if world was

created to actually do anything

wonder if you should join the herds

huddled in this-way-and-that hustle

Rocket

want to plaint in light that swims slowly

from manicured stacks of office windows

covering over the fact that the great light above

might actually be speeding up

wish to ask how to repeat, repeat, repeat this

galling handing over of life to less and less real

regret the triage of no time and what your putting everything off

when you had so much of it has caused

Syndrome

The Feelings Wheel Spiral 

 

Why do they call a person a ‘party’? 

Maybe a crowd would make sense, but then,       

humans don’t jubilee together all that 

naturally (anymore?). 

They seem singularly bad  

at even creating habitats for humans. 

Maybe this will all be over soon. 

I should not excuse myself with despair. 

Too easy. I am not a           cynic. I love the world. 

That’s why I refuse                        to stop believing 

   that it should be saved.               Or maybe that’s just  

     what I should want to say       and what I actually want to say 

       is nothing anymore and just try 

to get whatever I can for myself 

before the whole damn thing sinks 

   into the same oblivion it  

  makes of so many people. 

                                     Would serve it right. 

                  Then again, I am grateful  

  

so much of every day 

        

that I don’t get what         I deserve. 

   

 Even if the future is so bright, as I was told, 

because it’s the      handbasket        

                       already on fire  

      before it even reaches  

                                                                  hell. 

 

 

Language Limits

                Language Limits 

       tree is not a tree at least not inherentl 

A         and paralysis is just a cyst in words    y  

                       you can twist  

                        indefinitely  

                         so maybe  

                         then a tree  

                     is a tree but  

               only indif- 

                          f      n 

                          e       t 

                           r     l 

                          e     y 

Megan Wildhood is a writer, editor and writing coach who helps her readers feel seen in her monthly newsletter, poetry chapbook Long Division (Finishing Line Press, 2017), her full-length poetry collection Bowed As If Laden With Snow (Cornerstone Press, May 2023)

as well as Mad in America, The Sun and elsewhere.

You can learn more about her writing, working with her and her mental-health and research newsletter at meganwildhood.com