Poem "March is March" by American Poet Emily Skaja

EMILY SKAJA, an award-winning American poet, was born and raised in rural Illinois. She earned a BA from Millikin University (Illinois), an MFA in Creative Writing from Purdue University (Indiana), and a PhD in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Cincinnati (Ohio). At the University of Cincinnati, she was a Taft Summer Research Fellow and also earned a certificate in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.

Skaja’s debut poetry collection, Brute, published by Graywolf Press in 2019, won the 2018 Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets. With this recognition came a 2019-2020 Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Previous awards include the Gulf Coast Poetry Prize, an AWP Intro Journals Award, and an Academy of American Poets College Prize.

The Poetry Co-Editor of the Southern Indiana Review, Skaja is an Assistant Professor in the MFA program at the University of Memphis, Tennessee, where she resides.

Photo Credit: Kaitlyn Stoddard Photography

We go on forward. I go on floating my facein a map of Lake Michigan, blue there

as logically as anywhere else. When he leaves I stop

washing the cups I stop cleaning the floors.
I don't have the patience to identify whether dirt is different

in the hue of his absence, if there is less of it,

if it possesses a graver, more articulate
sense of itself, grown worldly in suffering.

Water lurks in the drain like it's gawking.

My mother says Why not date yourself for a while.
Accordingly, I listen to all seven Harry Potters.

I go for long walks in a circle & insult Scalia on facebook

because I'm trying to win me over & these are my interests.
The radio is a dick to me. Pop songs are barbed with revelations

that make the people who listen to pop songs return

with a change of heart, Rihanna, I tweet, I need you to be okay

& not okay at the same time as me, together in a cycle.

I adopt a dog I keep as my shadow.

Every morning she cries when I leave & I think Finally someone gets it.

I force myself to take time like a pill that stops my pulse

but just for a minute. Time collects around 4:30, refusing to move.

I leave the dog for an hour & she chews up

her bed, a blue blanket, her cage door

& I say You can't keep doing this--

& I say What am I supposed to do--

& I say You don't understand

I need to leave you EVERY DAY I need to leave.

Source: Brute: Poems by Emily Skaja, Graywolf Press, Minnesota, USA, 2019.

AUTHOR ROSALIENE BACCHUS

Reaching minds and hearts through storytelling

POEM "MARCH IS MARCH" BY AMERICAN POET EMILY SKAJA

MARCH IS MARCH BY EMILY SKAJA

MARCH IS MARCH continued