Charissa Z

“This is a Personal Poem

My self's self is thinking about itself.
Trying to sell its self a new self.

Don't worry, reader,
I'm not trying to fool you with language,

I have eyes to do that with.
I have forgotten our history,

I have forgotten how we met.
Reader, are you upset at how fast we're moving?

I'm likely with you in your bed,
between your hands, somewhere

in your mouth before
whatever it is you'll say next.

Say yes and now and love too.
Say what did Judith Butler say when saying,

" … one is undone, in the face of the other,
by the touch, by the scent, by the feel,

by the prospect of the touch,
by the memory of the feel."

I want to know you, reader.
I want to know a lot of things.

Can we ever truly forget about ourselves?
Is every self a self that makes itself available to love?

Like death. And its kind availability.
Like language, reader,

would we still be so unhappy if we could escape it?
To name the namelessness that is love,

in what we read, and what we see,
and what are feelings really?

Facts or flaws,
or something tells me now

that I must leave you, reader.
It's not you, it's me.

We guess at why things end,
we ruin things, we start and stall,

and all all all we do
is want.”
― Alex Dimitrov, Begging for It

“Mad Lib Elegy"

There are starving children left on your plate.
There are injuries without brains.
Migrant workers spend 23 hours a day
removing tiny seeds from mixtures
they cannot afford to smoke
and cannot afford not to smoke.
Entire nations are ignorant of the basic facts
of hair removal and therefore resent
our efforts to depilate unsightly problem areas.
Imprisonment increases life expectancy.
Finish your children. Adopt an injury.
‘I'm going to my car. When I get back,
I'm shooting everybody.'
[line omitted in memory of_______]


70% of pound animals will be euthanized.
94% of pound animals would be euthanized
if given the choice. The mind may be trained
to relieve itself on paper. A pill
for your safety, a pill for her pleasure.
Neighbors are bothered by loud laughter
but not by loud weeping.
Massively multiplayer zombie-infection web-games
are all the rage among lifers.
The world is a rare case of selective asymmetry.
The capitol is redolent of burnt monk.
‘I'm going to my car. When I get back
I'm shooting everybody.'
[line omitted in memory of _______]


There are two kinds of people in the world:
those that condemn parking lots as monstrosities,
‘the ruines of a broken World,' and those
that respond to their majesty emotionally.
70% of the planet is covered in parking lots.
94% of a man's body is parking lot.
Particles of parking lot have been discovered
in the permanent shadows of the moon.
There is terror in sublimity.
If Americans experience sublimity
the terrorists have won.
‘I'm going to my car. When I get back
I'm shooting everybody.'
[line omitted in memory of _______]”
― Ben Lerner

“Love is not consolation. It is light.”
― Simone Weil

“In the Andes, a lake disappears overnight, sucked
through cracks in the earth.
How can I explain
the sunlight stippling your face in the early morning?
Why not believe that the eye throws its own light,
that seeing illuminates
the world?
On the moon,
astronaut David Scott drops a hammer and a falcon feather,
and we learn nothing
we didn’t already know.”
― Nick Lantz