[POETRY]

[11/03/2025]

Taylor Swift (& I don’t even like poems)

by Gabriella Fryer

tap tap tapping at the typewriter
my daughter will write poems
about flowers
roses
violets
they must have grown
delicate roots
in my uterine walls

but all I hear now
are winter finches
tap tap tapping
on my kitchen window

their glass reflections
and their branches
scratching almost
absent-mindedly
on my back
while I dismember
a chicken
root veggies
cheese rinds
bones for broth

we both make
an unsettling crunch
like too-cold cereal
their little beaks crack
and create new
spiderwebs
new skeletal hands
reaching through

when my beak splits
when I exhale
in exhausted
almost nauseous huffs
my deep red-brown fur
ruffles and I slap
a large piece of meat
across my face
and call it good
it drips down my cheek
hey now i am Odin

now I am rinsing my skin
with no soap
drippings
the in-betweens
of other creatures
we all toddle in uncertainty
only to collapse
a still warm
cotton apron

dead plants
draped over your arm
hanging on your rocking chair
dead trees
all beat against the wood floors
more dead trees
in unison
until they
sound like my heartbeat

like a horse broken
walked off a cliff’s edge
and free-falling
unwinding threads
on fence posts

trip
ribs crack
crack crack
lame animals
insects between
my hands

if I wrote poems
when I was seven years old
I would have called it
stop!
I am so sad
for this little lightning bug
still pulsing
stop

stop
stop stop
is this enough?
should I write some more metaphors
describe unexpected images
the ways your chest rises
and falls
the way a person can be
a phoenix
the way we are always
and already
and never before
the way I am your ghost

I could still be a poet
I could drink mead
I could be Taylor Swift
a whole album
for our tortured hearts

we are a whole department
of romantics
which is a nice way to say
nostalgic
living in the clouds
severe depression

when I was a poet
I could hear the starts
and the ends of poems
floating in the air
hold them
red balloons

I wrote all my poems for you
but I didn’t even write poems
until I saw the outline of you
against fluorescent backdrops
and I thought
coffee
cigarettes
old cars
fast food
cold mornings

so tired, god I am so tired

and you don’t even like balloons!
and I don’t even like poems!
so what are we doing
speaking two different languages
just to say
love me I love you love me
and
don't stop
yes yes yes

GABRIELLA FRYER earned her MA in English at the University of Maine, specializing in gender and literature. She is the author of Muted Red (Bottlecap Press), and her recent creative writing can also be found in Gramarye, Crow & Cross Keys, and Midwest Weird (forthcoming), among others. When she is not reading or writing, Gabriella enjoys cooking and spending time outside with her partner and kids.