Poem in which I am good
everything will be good
and the trousers I left to blow
in the wind and rain and lemon leaves, them too.
the linen will keep its soft thatching. and the hamsters
I saw on the internet are certainly alive still
though the video was taken years ago and nobody
has ever told me how long hamsters live.
everybody I love will live forever. everybody I love
will love me. my shoes are clean and comfortable.
my body does not matter. everybody’s toes fall off
in the winter and nobody smells perfect even if they’re
claudia schiffer and everyone forgets to cut their nails.
see that girl. see that girl there. I know she is perfect. I know
therefore that I am perfect. I am a comma in a sea of them.
I am a tennis ball in a field of them. I am ready to be chosen.
I am ready to be left. I am ready to be taken into space
and tucked into an asteroid belt until I reach the morning.
all the quite large rocks will know my name. I could be good
at so many things. I am loud in the car park and in the bird park
and in certain beds and this is good. I am good and loud.
all the dead people in my life remember me even from the top.
they watch me with vested interest. they hold my arms over my face
to save me from the rain. I walk with purpose
and I smell so, so good. I am full to my fingers of lettuce and iced water.
in summer when I picked dandelions for the geriatric guinea pig
I changed the world. I killed a weed. I filled a mouth
with gold. I made the joints of sandringham click like a neck to loosen
in a satisfying and healthy way. I am kind. I am that kind of person.
what do I deserve? the same as all of us. everything.
I am good and. I am good and
everybody I love will live forever.
everybody I love will live forever.
Sophie van Waardenberg
Sophie van Waardenberg is a poet from Auckland and first-year MFA candidate at Syracuse University, New York state. She is a poetry editor for Salt Hill and associate editor of Geometry. Her first chapbook-length collection was published in AUP New Poets 5 (2019).