A Poem by Amy Gerstler: ‘The Marigold Sonnets’

I.

Right this moment I’ll hearken to no matter music Spotify has in thoughts.
Concerto for Black Holes and Slime Molds by the Panty Sniffers?
That algorithm is aware of me so effectively! I’ve pitched myself below
this magnolia tree, coronary heart first, earlier than I get lobbed anyplace
worse. No extra of grandpa’s stuffed marlin obtrusive at me
from the living-room wall, no extra robocalls providing
to restructure debt by no means incurred, no extra doomscrolling
(for the second.) I’ve retreated to the bosom of nature,
the place chook chirps whirr like sticks being fed right into a wooden
chipper and magnolia leaves clatter into my lap like leather-based
wings. Mari has flown off to Mexico. She believes in UFOs.
She needs to be known as Marigold now, to go away her unhappy previous
behind and bask within the mysteries of intercourse and medicines
and panhandling and facet hustles and is that basically so unhealthy?

II.

It appears actually unhealthy, or no less than alarming to me, although
I, too, was a sizzling mess in my twenties, so way back,
in a special period and circumstance. I’m nonetheless a sunken
ship riddled with eels. I’ll admit that up entrance.
However, since I’m utilizing Marigold’s travels and travails
as a thinly veiled excuse to blab about myself,
let’s get again to her. Marigold’s nostril runs always.
She suffers from bronchial asthma and eczema. She loves animals,
toddlers, psychedelics, and woman bands. We share three
of those 4 loves, since I’ve been lowered by advancing
age to pretending I favor booze to hallucinogens.
Within the violent tides of her twenties, Marigold shed
the final of her child fats, then graduated from stumbling
non secular seeker to apprentice sensualist. She needs, she needs.

III.

She needs to spit in capitalism’s tea, impress older,
closely tattooed fellow sensualists (the sorts that go away
enamel marks), kick patriarchy within the nut sack, darken
her arms with pink and ochre dirts of different worlds,
study 5 languages (however solely by osmosis) whereas chasing
ninety-nine sorts of buzz and making an attempt to drag free
from the tar pit of historical past. At her age, one is pure urge.
Life is a wildfire. So it’s no huge sin that her bed room
resembles a spot the place, amongst all their hoardings,
a pair of hoarders simply staged a 24-hour wrestling match.
I simply fear about her. Like I’ve the precise, me,
who brims with wrongful convictions all day then tucks
herself into mattress every evening with ten stuffed animals
and an Ambien sandwich. So what am I making an attempt to say?

IV.

Am I saying, Marigold, that in your makes an attempt to enter
heaven you’re crashing the incorrect gates? That I want
you’d discover life-guiding messages someplace different
than in sidewalk scatters of pollen? Oops, I do
that, not you. Clearly projection is one among my sins.
Perhaps your dedication to get misplaced is a sound response
to any decade by which individuals really feel they’re about to be
vaporized every day. It’s a crippling time to be younger.
I need the magnolia to achieve down its branches
and hug me. My twenties have been a rapturous tantrum
throughout which I aspired to be woman, tiger, and pirate
rolled into one. When I attempt to recall that insanity,
it looks like it by no means actually occurred, or as if it did,
to somebody, however I’m unsure I used to be ever there myself.