I Thought I'd Be Over This By Now

By shayne

I Thought I'd Be Over This By Now is the debut full-length poetry collection by shayne, whose work comes together to "disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed" (Cesar A. Cruz), and never presumes to land on the oft-fabled 'right answer.'

As she agonizes over inherited (and infuriating) mental illness, breakups of

• Language: English
• Publisher: shayne
• Release date: Jan 20, 2024
• ISBN: 9798869140210

Book preview

Still Good

Give the bottle a whiff before you take a sip.

You’ll know if it’s gone bad, so if you have to ask,

it’s probably safe to drink. You can use it up to a week

after its expiration date.

How long will I be good after mine?

Fortified in a factory for the benefit of the public, pasteurized and sanitized, skimmed from the top with skin all smooth and white,

have I nourished any bones?

Did I help any children grow?

To the men who will find me intolerable and drink from me anyway;

Who will taste me, fall ill, and set me back on the shelf when I express my oldest self —

Revenge for forcibly extracting me from fertility’s breast —

If I was difficult to digest before the date imprinted on my face,

who can tell me whether I’m still good?

Horizontal

up

move

I feel my larynx

as I say my own name

bounces

vertically

a couple

of times

and I find it ironic because

up

is the opposite of how I ever am

and I never bounce

unless I am making a poem

unintentionally.

Bored on a Road Trip

Hello.

I write for attention.

Which is funny because I barely get any.

And also I hate everyone

Looking at me.

Etymon

Shayne

like Shane

or Sean

or John

from the Hebrew meaning

God is Gracious.

Gracious

from the Latin gratia

meaning Esteem

or Favor

Esteem

from the Latin æstimare meaning

to Estimate, as in Worth.

Evidently

God’s appraisal of me

is high

or at least that’s what my mother hoped

when she named me after

her friend’s babysitter’s kid.

She tells me she picked it when she was twelve.

Shayne

like Shayna

or Yaffa

or Jamila

or Shaina

of Yiddish origin meaning

Beautiful

or Lovely.

Evidently

I am

aesthetically

pleasing to

the eye

or at least that’s what my mother hoped

when she fed me a scolding after

purging her own figs and leaves.

I’ve been ashamed ever since.

All I want to be

is poetry.

I want people to look at me

and be utterly neutralized.

I want my partials to ring out

as fractals of my being,

every watcher seeing that part of me

which speaks to the whole in their mind

and mine.

You want to touch this art,

and as you reach out toward my frame,

aware of your peripherals

for watchers of your own,

you press my cool glass against your nerves

to find I am a page.

I smell, as pages do,

of dead wood alive and new.

Breathe in easy

and faintly sweet.

I long to be this for you.

Inertia

I don’t pretend to know what’s out there,

but I’m afraid that it is nothing.

The gravity