Someday, Again
I’m waiting for the words to catch up to my heart which is
elliptical at the moment there’s an apology
even I am expecting to bore out of my throat
but what for what for
I am continuing to write in a font that displeasures me
everything shifts so rapidly
my body the environment my body the environment
why not return to something as aggressively unspectacular as arial
a font for all my first thoughts today I typed the words
“someday, again”
and deleted and retyped deleted and retyped
inside of the collapse I am still holding on to narrative
this is not sentiment it is how I keep my family together
when I breathe in deep enough I feel it all the old anger
waiting to become newer anger not having the words
can feel like not having something to hit I think I wrote that in another poem
before
what is the equation that solves everything ideas are commodity
even the idea that ideas are commodity I don’t even know
what I have to sell I’ve spent my entire life living on a fault line
I know all that’s been made is inherently broken.
This is not me being dour this is me writing a note
that says I miss you I meant that the other way
but the one you were thinking works, too
Copyright © 2023 by Jason Bayani. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on May 22, 2023, by the Academy of American Poets.
“There was a point where I started to question what I was doing as a poet and if my voice was even needed, which I think was a necessary question for me to explore. But for a while, I didn’t write because that question made me uncomfortable and I tend to avoid discomfort. I don’t know if this poem is me facing that; maybe it’s a beginning, a negotiation of some kind, a way to find my way back to the table, or a way to understand my poetics inside of a world in collapse.”
—Jason Bayani
Jason Bayani
Jason Bayani is Filipino poet and the author of the collections Locus (Omnidawn Publishing, 2019) and Amulet (Write Bloody Publishing, 2014).