Lizzy Burnam 🐞

I don’t have the patience for publishing 
or the ethos for esoterica. Every primate 
and pack species engages in some form 
of politics, and every politician engages 
in some form of escapism—like speaking 
from the gut, accepting blowjobs from people 
other than their spouses, delusion dripping 
from their brows while addressing a crowd 
of citizens cheering for something, anything 
new to happen, et cetera. Yesterday’s news
is no longer breaking, just broken, and we 
the people still have something to shout 
about after all these years. We continue
to live like animals, yet curate the crumbs 
of our lives to look like machine-generated 
images of whoever the hell we’re supposed 
to be based on philosophies we abandoned 
decades ago. I liked church for the collective 
off-pitch singing and the cookies served 
after the sermon but didn’t appreciate how 
the priest was the only one who ever spoke. 
Did you know that tumors metastasize faster
in lonely people? I would’ve liked any brain 
except the one that writes these poems. 
I would’ve liked any body except the one 
that hoards scars like they mean something. 
If they mean anything at all, it’s just that we 
carry the past with us always, and the present
is both distorted and determined by the long 
history of life on earth, which is to say the long 
history of life itself. We didn’t need a bigger
parking lot, just clean water and maybe one
friend who knew us better than we knew
ourselves. Remember the school teachers
who tried to open doors instead of lock them? 
Remember all the awful things you said? 
I think if I were to start a business, I’d only hire 
morning people. We’d gather under the early 
dark sky and watch the sun paint the horizon 
pink, then blue. Look, I’m not trying to glorify 
anything, I’m just saying, not every land 
is Disneyland, and sometimes home is more 
of a feeling than a place—out of necessity, yes, 
but also because of the stories we like to tell 
ourselves and others about where we belong.