Anne Cecelia Holmes, The Jitters

ODE
None of this concerns you butsometimes it’s better to pretend closeness
than live in fear of rejection. Things I know:car sickness, the Mall of America, all-night
murder dreams. Childhood was a joke.Slinging imaginary rifles over my shoulder,
falling out of trees for negative attention.Now I talk to you like I have nothing
to lose, no grip whatsoever. I sneak intothe neighbor’s basement just to be the criminal.
I call you in the middle of the night to sayI’m not a ghost yet. It’s funny because
in Chicago I have a real brother but whata boring story. Things I don’t know:
portion control, easing depression,the optimal gesture.
Nothing I say will make you love meand there’s real honor in that.
The author of two poetry chapbooks, Massachusetts poet Anne Cecelia Holmes’ first trade collection is The Jitters (Grand Rapids MI: Horse Less Press, 2015). Built as a collection of compact lyrics, the poems in The Jitters are fearless, vulnerable and razor-sharp. These poems revel in even the smallest miracles, attempt to comprehend the darkness, and take no shit from anyone. As she writes to open the poem “WORLD’S TINEST EARTHQUAKE,” “I’d like to say what’s been said / and say it better. Break // accountability exactly open. / When faced with an ultimatum // I choose the most destructive force, / haul everyone onto the lawn just // to get tough. Please trust me.” These are poems born of a quick, dry wit, composed as a series of observations, critiques and direct statements that take no prisoners. “When nothing changes I finally love myself,” she writes, in the poem “MEMORY BRICKS.”
SOME RELICS
All of this hurts the facial expression.I’m sick of watching you fall overthe television like you’re the oneinside it, and more than everI feel like a tugboat in that scene.Don’t blame me for yourbad cartography. I can’t bean acrobat becausemy heart isn’t ripe.You said this trampolinemakes you dream of chairsbut to me the backyardis a butcher shop.Bring me a bag of rocksand I’ll carpet you in them.I’m going to bean admiral in all this.
I’ve been increasingly aware over the past few years of a particular strain of American poetry: poets, predominantly female poets, composing very striking lyric poems that combine savage wit, subversion, distraction and use of the straight phrase, blending lightness against dark subject matter. If I were to attempt any kind of list of examples, it would include Matthea Harvey, Natalie Lyalin, Dorothea Lasky, Amy Lawless, Sommer Browning, Emily Pettit, Bianca Stone, Hailey Higdon, Emily Kendal Frey, Anne Boyer and the late Hillary Gravendyk, and now, Anne Cecilia Holmes. What connects the writers on this list is the way they each compose tight lyric bursts that slightly unsettle, managing to utilize both light and dark humour, and push to shake at the core of expectation, discomfort and the otherwise-unspoken. There is something about how each of these authors, including Holmes, have embraced elements of the confessional mode through a compact lyric that can be used to voice flashes of anger, annoyance, frustrations, loneliness and violence, and even conversations on evil, as Holmes writes in the final poem in the collection:
POEM FOR WHAT I’M NOT ALLOWED
Ode to the murderer I imaginein every band of trees. Tomy blood cells, to well-ordered systems,to my head absolutely thickwith disease. Ode to the dress I slept inand wore the next day, to the cilantroI planted in all the wrong weather.Ode to the fucking cosmos. Ode to my faceagainst your face, to poems that want tolike us but don’t. Ode to beingthe bloodless one, the neurotic one,the one ignoring your spiritual journey.To your clothes in my basementcovered in ink. To I wore this whenwe first met, to I want to hurt you like thisand then like this. Ode to quitting my jobto stay excited, to exposing myselfto my neighbors, to embedding so manyrocks in my chest. Ode to Tulsa.Ode to the 900-foot Jesus, to keepingmy hands in my pockets most of the time.To my brothers and sisters, to all myenemies, to imagining every wayto die in every possible scenario.Ode to crying when I can’t find my shoes,to feeling like god will punish me forsins I don’t believe in. Ode to takingpictures in front of strangers’ houses.Ode to my jacket covered in yellow.Ode to how I wish you were builtout of wood panels. Ode to staringout the window in the worstof the house. Ode to your age,to my age, to how I react improperlywhen reenacting your fate. Ode toso few phenomenons. Ode toabsolving myself of everything.To singing what I’m doing, to arguingwhat counts as “artifact” and “alive.”Ode to my wandering pacemaker.Ode to my big fat heart. Ode topretending I’ve never been whereI used to live. Ode to hoping you’rea goner. Ode to grieving nothingeach time a villain is born.