Anonymous ASKED:

Your poems are super dope. I hat yet to read one I don't like. You have a gift. Continue to give the world your writing. We need it.

Thank you. So much. I don’t know that I’ll ever get tired of feeling connected to people. It’s one of the things that feels the most natural to me.

I think write because instances of humanity, and the things and feelings and actions that come with it or in spite of it, should not be treated as isolated incidences. We do not live or love or hug or hold or hate or leave-and-never-call-back in a vacuum. I try to write about the changes in air quality when a person turns into a Southern California brush fire. I try to write about the evacuation, and take-shelter-ing, and (e)(i)mmigration that happens inside of us.

I think that I’m going to stop writing here as much as I have been relatively soon and try to break ground (for real, this time) on the book I haven’t been writing.

I’d love to know which pieces have been your (and anyone else reading) favorites. I’ll be digging through my archives reviewing my own favorites, and deciding which fragments/haikus/poems are going to be deconstructed and used for book components, but I can only read these poems from the same place that I read them, and you can give me something I can’t do alone.

you can email me (public@nilesheron.com), or write me here (www.nilesheron.com/ask).

I love you. I’m excited to push toward into this next chapter. I hope you’ll come with me.

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5.6.13

She got lost at the corner;

that place where his dimples broke open

and formed a delta;

mouth of tooth and gum and voice and tongue

fertilized by a lifetime more smiles

than numbers know how to name.

She immediately became

overwhelmed

by all the deficiencies

she’d never had problems counting up to.

Tried to add up the downs and get a number that felt right for him,

and cried over the left overs,
never letting go of the remainders,
asking her pillow why this division took so long.

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Freewrite 5.3.13

The closest thing to happy

this young life has learnt

was when she handed me a palette

full of colors I couldn’t name

and kissed me into a painter;

kissed herself into a canvas;

let me brush stroke her into a portrait

of what it

feels like inside of my hands when i looked at her.

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Freewrite 5.2.13

And then suddenly:

you feel the bottoms your shoes turn to omnivorous mouths of starving shop-vacs —

you feel your soul grabbing,

clawing, desperate against

whatever lives at the bottom of your stomach

as it is inhaled through your soles

and left in the fear-filled footprints you’ve

never
not
walked
in

You almost break your neck,

looking back out of a window that seems never to show you enough of your past

as you realize that you forgot to pick

up your bags off the ground at the bus stop.

You had set them down

(gentle;
like they were prone
to shatter)

when a man you decided you wanted to grow up to be

asked you for a light.

All you could think was that he had done what you wanted:

he’d found a way to live his life.

He was, or sure seemed, free, and

happy,

and other adjectives

that you didn’t know

existed adjacent to real life possibility.

You had spent the mini-steps back onto the bus telling yourself

that you were not going to cry —

thought that it wouldn’t be something

that the man

would have done.

You had walked down the aisle to your isle of a seat thinking

that you had no idea how you would ever

carry

all
of
your
stuff

to the place you planned

to chase to.

Anonymous ASKED:

I love your work

I love you for reading.

It’s a blessing to feel like things you write with words you are scared by can make anyone else feel any sort of way.

So, thank you.

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Freewrite 4.30.13 (22/30)

Never stopped, or asked

what happened inside —

how you might have found your faith affected

when I sharpened the notes from your songs

and flew them off the first cliff I was able to find

or stood on your praise until I was sure

it’s pulse had gone as flat as Brittney singing in the bathroom.

I never asked if it, or you ever re-inflated, and songbirded your way to Lazarus.

I just ran

because I was piss-scared of

all of the things I could do wrong from

your pulpit.

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