by Hampton Henderson (’25)
Abstract:
I wrote most of these poems through a process that to me feels very D.I.Y. What I did was keep a running notes app on my phone of discrete little earworm phrases that more or less just occurred to me on a run, at work, or in any other dissociative scenario. Then, whenever I felt like writing a poem I would sit on my front porch, pick and choose entries from among that list and play with them until something larger cohered. One aspect of this process which I wish appeared in this collection, but just happened not to based on the poems selected are the moments when I reuse a piece of material like “Railroad Heritage” or “you’ve bet the house on the beltway’s death rattle” across multiple poems. It’s interesting. Perhaps you will see these poems elsewhere one day.
podcast at work
Grapple onto that hulking chatlog you call a life up until the point you realize you’ve adopted an ocular selfhood and developed autonomic goo-goo eyes to the word “breakneck.” Cringe as it is, breaching this prefab ceiling will likely equip you to repurpose your most half-measured stop-gaps into functional ushers that crave a thrilling shirk—they’re what’ll give your piece its trademark terminal flare.
In a certain sense, life can be told as a history of motivated commonplace motifs: they pucker you up into something bigger than yourself, set you against a wavering embankment of shame where the optics of the clandestine embargo set forth against you don a faux-humanitarian glint, then forcefeed you the godforsaken vocabulary to ask yourself “do I dare prepare lunch thusly? Or would that be playing right into the hands of the next in succession?” What they present to you as a peek behind the curtain to the much-lauded New York Times side of things is in reality an induction into the time-tested holding pattern of This American Life.
Consider, will you, the mind-virus effect of the Truism: it turns you on to the Railroad Heritage stare of the service worker, the backroom proxy wars of family dinner, and the sort of sense-articulation one might expect from the grounded mouthing of a familiar, particular town. And this has by and large sucked! What once presented itself as an excuse to grasp at a means beyond one’s station has now become indistinguishable from that self-same trend which blocks all actionable paths towards bringing about its own gradual, scheduled dissolution!
Might we find an escape route in assuming an ironic stance towards one’s own sublimation whereby a window opens onto a vista of assumedly actionable transfigurations? Though this arena assures no outcome, the possibility of happening upon a once-maladaptive model could itself become a tangible imaginary with oracular undertones and dim, unswept corners.
ergonomia!
cleft to shit what’s to grab? gingerly I’ve sidled up to the seams of your shishkebab heart with nothing but rage in my mind’s eye and up my sleeve—you guessed it—what could it be but another pocket.
be forewarned, there is in fact such state as grown-up in this little game of ours. it’s when tinker condescends into graft and helming rightfully assumes its place preceding happenstance, a very utter mode where one is tempted to beg and plead and such for more, ever-loving more in spite of whatever writ-large opinions those tenure-tracked well-wishers over in vox populi might have drafted for the occasion.
if perchance one finds one’s self here don’t hesitate to cry out loud about it, use one’s words about it, take each and every bounding precaution about it in the daisy-chained hope that one might #stallthebrawl.
if need be: jump into conclusions, rise through the ranks by way of schmooze, show out in little more than a hand-me-down bouquet remainder or evacuate yourself into, say, the city of Alamogordo, New Mexico bordered on the east by the Sacramento Mountains and to the west by Holloman Air Force Base.
Synchronicity is the easiest thing in the world. Just walk in any direction until you find a body of water. There you’ll realize:
past lives’ regret only ever
moves on into some kind of
forward-facing rainmaking
time and again, it’ll squander
the myriad opportunities
Heavenly Hal throws its way
and continue on picking at what’s
left of Older Brother’s bones
do they ever satisfy?
replace that need to breathe
with a more nuanced will to want?
doubtful.
But the go-along is all the while helped along
and the sun beats down regardless
and regardless the word waits
and regardless the sun beats down
wikihow-to-essentialism
go to the cul-de-sac on Minstrel Hill and wonder aloud:
“has anyone with any wherewithal seen such
reckless Bonaventure gambling before?”
if you and you alone hear a splitting “yes”
you’ve torn asunder
the eighth note rest
lynchpinning this whole production
you’ve opened your castmates up
to unprecedented anchor-weight
by soldering them onto
a hardstrung, precariously reigning
priest caste
in the case of “no”,
you’ve bet the house on the beltway’s death rattle
as pertains you,
this’ll mean get used to a nagging sense of shadowban
as for them,
it’ll just imply some cozy Friday night kayfabe
for all parties involved however,
expect a ground-up infrastructure overhaul
once the linktrees are left to grow over
expect the days to melt into
soft-spoken director’s commentary
over an uncanny laser light show
but regardless what you hear,
life will not become any easier
you’ll hardly notice though,
your stomach as full as it is these days
scrap metal casting
turnover grin;
left to yet
/
not to cross
looks like
let’s up wink
has scrawled past
Mr. Goodnight Moon
again
breakfast food
is good
because you
combine it
Bio:
Hampton Henderson is a MAPH student from Athens, Georgia. Breakfast is very important to him.