[B] Poem

Happy end of poetry month

It’s the last day of April. The last day of poetry month. The last day of my semester, of my 1st year in my MFA. Today, I met with my professor, and we talked about the blurry line between fiction and nonfiction where my writing sits. Tonight, I sat on stage with two classmates and read aloud a chapter we wrote together; after sitting in the audience listening to my other classmates read their chapters of our collective story which we all wrote together. Now, I’m home reading through poems, and marking the end of the month. 

April is always a poem, but today, oh, well, it was a beautiful last stanza. The kind of stanza that takes you by surprise but then you realize this is exactly what the poem has been building towards the whole time. The kind of stanza that makes you breath deep, makes you say “oh, holy shit”. The kind that makes you feel so grateful, just to read it. The kind that gets you choked up. The kind that is best when shared. 

Now, I’m sharing a little poem I wrote over the course of poetry month. These same classmates and I, we were asked to write alliterative poems: poems entirely made up of words beginning with the same letter. This exercise was based on Michael Dumanis’ poem “Autobiography.” I was given B, at random. I wrote the first draft in the backseat of a car headed towards the beach on Easter, with my two best friends up front. I then edited it in the back of a concert with my other best friend, who fed me more B words till it took full form. And then I shared it with classmates and edited it with my professor and improved the punctuation. Now, it’s taken this shape. 

Today is the last day of April and the last day of my semester and I have more to say about both of those things, about how beautiful they have been, but for now, here’s this final stanza. 

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Boy’s Biography 

Before birth–

Bodies, bare, boney, beautiful. 

Beloved beheld beloved. 

Bodies bang. 

Beginning. Bewildering. Blessing. 

Belly button bulges, breasts balloon. 

Burgeoning bulbous belly: big, bigger, biggest. 

Budding ‘bryonic baby!

Birth–

Baby born: Boy! 

Blue baby. 

Blue-black blood. 

Blocked breath.

Begging, begging. 

Back, back, back… Bawling…  

Big breath! 

Blank-slate.

Between birth + big beyond–

Boy became being. 

Big beyond beckoned. 

Big breath. Bliss? 

“Bye!!”