Famous Last Lines

1.
I have emotional motion sickness.
I remember when JFK Jr.’s
plane went missing.
I’ve painted myself into a corner.
I am beyond sick at this.
I hung a maiden on my pocket
going in a rush to answer the phone.
I have so many violets in my flower beds.
More than I’ve seen in 10 years! Help?
I am waiting for a representative
from the moving company.
I have wasted my life.

2.
I’ve made a lot of changes
in the last six months.
I’m still committed to abolition.
I live in downtown Lincoln (Nebraska)
which means I have daily conversations
with an ever growing
homeless community here.
Matt and I are holding the victims
of the Iowa City shooting
and their loved ones
in our prayers this morning.
On both sides of my family,
I descend from witches.
I, in fact, hate the zodiac chart.
I still need to read the article, but
I already have something to say.
I can’t stand myself.

3.
I left my job. I left the city.
I left expectations and demands
I have for my body.
I added some sax. And here we are.
That song is quintessential Tulsa.
I found out I was pregnant
a week before I got on a boat
with no wifi or cell service
to spend three weeks at Arctic Circle.
Another mourning dove
is having her babies on my porch.
The sense that I am about to FLY.
Greetings from the South Bend airport,
where I discovered my first “flight”
is actually a bus.
The room seems smaller
than the roomette I had
on the City of New Orleans.
But I’m glad I did Bid Up.
You must change your life.

4.
I and the Queen tribute band
made the local news!
This was moments after
the Pontiac, IL tornado crossed the road
less than a quarter mile in front of me.
Glad I am a geriatric millennial
who will never need to worry
about people like clavicular
& the “looksmaxxing community”
mogging me on the street
while they jester-cel or whatever.
I know myself to be so lucky
already to have lived for years
amidst horses under a big sky.
I moved here from Philly
because my boyfriend lives here.
My name is Jinx. Now love me. All of me!
I hate my poems.

text compiled from “I” statements in my social media feed capped by the final lines of poems by James Wright, Rainer Maria Rilke, Mary Ruefle, and Brenda Shaughnessy