Gratitude: November 28, 2025

To Whom It Definitely Concerns,

Please accept this letter as formal notification that I am resigning from the position of My Own Worst Enemy. I’ve appreciated the opportunity to lower my standards so far they could lose a limbo contest to a crumb. I’ve been honored to serve as the server at the banquet where I eat myself alive. The day I was hired I could have never imagined how many employee of the month plaques I’d acquire from breaking the standing record for standing in one’s own way.

In this position I’ve grown continuously, like bacteria in a staph infection. I had no idea that holding myself back would be contagious. I would like to have a different kind of impact on the future company I keep. The scene I made during our last team building exercise work me to the need for change. I know the young people in the office are still shook by my refusal to catch myself in the trust fall. I apologize for the gory display.

Moving forward, I’ll be pursuing opportunities in another field, preferably one where break rooms are for resting and not for breaking promises to the person I hope to become. I fully intend to replace whatever dreams I shattered when I was beating myself up. I have no idea where I learned “punching in” was a literal term. If I had known better I would have called I’m sick in the head.

I accepted this position initially because I believed it came with the very best insurance plan. How could I fall to my death from the ground floor? Over the years, however, I’ve gotten increasingly familiar with the fine print of the benefits. Turns out, there are no benefits when the co-pay of your life. 

My last day as My Own Worst Enemy will be December 31, 2025. In my final two weeks I will: 1) Fire my inner critic, or at least demote it to part time 2) Assure my passions have the tools they need to unionize with my actions 3) Sit naked on the photocopy machine so there are one hundred copies of my ass to kiss when I’m gone.

Though I suspect it won’t bode well for acquiring a positive referral letter, it’s important I state that I’m unwilling to train a replacement in this position. It is my suggestion that the job be eliminated altogether, and that no future person take on the task. If I can aid in the transition, please let me know.

Sincerely, 

AW Kim

New Moon

How much it must bear on its back,

a great ball of blue shadow,

yet somehow it shines, keeps up

an appearance. For hours tonight,

I walk beneath it, learning.

I want to be better at carrying sorrow.

If my face is a mask, formed over

the shadows that fill me,

may I smile on the world like the moon.

Ted Kooser

 

Gratitude: November 24, 2025

Kinder than Man

And God

please let the deer

on the highway

get some kind of heaven.

Something with tall soft grass

and sweet reunion.

Let the moths in porch lights

go someplace

with a thousand suns,

that taste like sugar

and get swallowed whole.

May the mice

in oil and glue

have forever dry, warm fur

and full bellies.

If I am killed

for simply living,

let death be kinder

than man.

Althea Davis

❤️

The Early Years

I don’t want to say

things were indescribably

bad exactly

but things were

indescribably bad exactly

I don’t want to say the tide

went out and left him

gasping—a landed fish precisely

but the tide did indeed go out

and left him gaping—a dropped ghost

to make matters worse

god gathered up all of god’s things

and paddled out on that tide

so he swore he would die

and to make matters worser still

he rocked back and forth

in a bubble rather boggy and sad

ate nothing but thistles therein

I don’t want to pretend

things were very much worse

than they were

but they very much were

Mark Waldron

.

No. 21

That two shells could be connected at their centers is a new thought I’ve never had. The way the canvas with its colors now turns into cubes. My life has been livid with itself for too long. The way out of my life is to fall out of the bottom of the old one. The way af Klint’s swans lost their faces right away. All this time, we were told to find yourself. The self was only a rumor. Maybe we were supposed to be with our dimensions. So that we could become different shapes within the same shape. Like mid-morning within morning. Yesterday, I heard the neighbors shouting, go wait at 29th street! Then later, just throw it away! I couldn’t hear anything else but, it was so good that you did that. Sometimes writing a poem feels like this. You put language together but the context is missing. Just the crisis remains. How you only hear something splash behind you. Sometimes living feels like this. You live your life, but the context is missing. You think it’s the context that you need. But when it arrives, there’s too much story and violence.

Victoria Chang

Gratitude: November 23, 2025

The New Higher 

You meant more than life to me. I lived through

you not knowing, not knowing I was living.

I learned that you called for me. I came to where

you were living, up a stair. There was no one there.

No one to appreciate me. The legality of it

upset a chair. Many times to celebrate

we were called together and where

we had been there was nothing there,

nothing that is anywhere. We passed obliquely,

leaving no stare. When the sun was done muttering,

in an optimistic way, it was time to leave that there.

Blithely passing in and out of where, blushing shyly

at the tag on the overcoat near the window where

the outside crept away, I put aside the there and now.

Now it was time to stumble anew,

blacking out when time came in the window.

There was not much of it left.

I laughed and put my hands shyly

across your eyes. Can you see now?

Yes I can see I am only in the where

where the blossoming stream takes off, under your window.

Go presently you said. Go from my window.

I am in love with your window I cannot undermine

it, I said.

John Ashbery 

❤️

 

Dancing on the Grave of a Son of a Bitch

Foreword to “Dancing on the Grave of a Son of a Bitch”

This poem is more properly a “dance poem” than a song or chant because the element of repetition is created by movements of language rather than duplicating words and sounds. However, it is in the spirit of ritual recitation that I wrote it/ a performance to drive away bad spirits perhaps.

The story behind the poem is this: a man and woman who have been living together for some time separate. Part of the pain of separation involves possessions which they had shared. They both angrily believe they should have what they want. She asks for some possession and he denies her the right to it. She replies that she gave him money for a possession which he has and therefore should have what she wants now. He replies that she has forgotten that for the number of years they lived together he never charged her rent and if he had she would now owe him $7,000.

She is appalled that he equates their history with a sum of money. She is even more furious to realize that this sum of money represents the entire rent on the apartment and implies that he should not have paid anything at all. She is furious. She kills him mentally. Once and for all she decides she is well rid of this man and that she shouldn’t feel sad at their parting. She decides to prove to herself that she’s glad he’s gone from her life. With joy she will dance on all the bad memories of their life together.

 

for my motorcycle betrayer

God damn it,

at last I am going to dance on your grave,

old man;

            you’ve stepped on my shadow once too often,

you’ve been unfaithful to me with other women,

women so cheap and insipid it psychs me out to think I might

ever

be put

in the same category with them;

you’ve left me alone so often that I might as well have been

a homesteader in Alaska

these past years;

and you’ve left me, thrown me out of your life

often enough

that I might as well be a newspaper,

differently discarded each day.

Now you’re gone for good

and I don’t know why

but your leaving actually made me as miserable

as an earthworm with no

earth,

but now I’ve crawled out of the ground where you stomped me

and I gradually stand taller and taller each

day.

I have learned to sing new songs,

and as I sing,

I’m going to dance on your grave

because you are

          dead

          dead

          dead

under the earth with the rest of the shit,

I’m going to plant deadly nightshade

on your grassy mound

and make sure a hemlock tree starts growing there.

Henbane is too good for you,

but I’ll let a bit grow there for good measure

because we want to dance,

we want to sing,

we want to throw this old man

to the wolves,

but they are too beautiful for him, singing in harmony

with each other.

                   So some white wolves and I

will sing on your grave, old man

and dance for the joy of your death.

“Is this an angry statement?”

                            “No, it is a statement of joy.”

“Will the sun shine again?”

                            "Yes,

                            yes,

                            yes,”

                            because I’m going to dance dance dance

Duncan’s measure, and Pindar’s tune,

Lorca’s cadence, and Creeley’s hum,

Stevens’ sirens and Williams’ little Morris dance,

oh, the poets will call the tune,

and I will dance, dance, dance

on your grave, grave, grave,

because you’re a sonofabitch, a sonofabitch,

and you tried to do me in,

but you cant cant cant.

You were a liar in a way that only I know:

            You ride a broken motorcycle,

            You speak a dead language

            You are a bad plumber,

            And you write with an inkless pen.

You were mean to me,

and I’ve survived,

God damn you,

at last I am going to dance on your grave,

old man,

I’m going to learn every traditional dance,

every measure,

and dance dance dance on your grave

                                                    one step

for every time

you done me wrong.

Diane Wakoski