Viewers may think that they can process it all

Stephanie Gray

but they are fooling themselves, if there's a window open you might have a chance, if you hadn't all gone to Holy Name, if the world didn't change, if you only bent the laws of physics so much, if the tides weren't so strong on the Hudson, if you didn't have to go, if it wasn't a dream you still believed in, if that different kind of memory didn't take hold, if your muscle memory didn't steady you, if you didn't have orders you couldn't ship, if you didn't see what you saw, if the crawl wasn't always hungry, if there weren't celebrities in every sphere, if you didn't know all the criminals in the neighborhood, if nothing ever happened here, if it wasn't a country club, if there wasn't magic in actuality, if you didn't dislocate the phrase, if you didn't grind the blue sky, if it hadn't been a downward trajectory, if the shadow didn't undo itself, if you all weren't all on break, if everyone didn't shut down, if Canada wasn't in the escape plans, if the future wasn't sparkling with nostalgia

If you look closely enough at a word, you’ll find it contains its opposite*

What part of headbanger is pop song
What part of deaf is hearing
What part of hearing is silence
What part of silence is noise
What part of I don’t know is I totally know
What part of I totally know is, I don’t, really
What part of metal is soft
What part of soft is metal
What part of heavy metal is jello
What part of jello is jawbreakers
What part of loss is have
What part of have is loss
What part of the person I was is the person I is
What part of subdued is totally here
What part of totally here is over there

Stephanie Gray

2016

Stuff I probably did and didn't

     After Tim Dlugos' Things I Might Do

I probably didn't tell you that the last
Line of your poem left me on a plane of
Movement somewhere between the best of pop
Culture and the longest break in your favorite pop song
I probably didn't tell you that the train is going to take
Way longer than you think and you were probably annoyed
I probably broke the moon in pieces with my night vision
Straining too hard to remember what I probably dropped in your inbox
I probably should've said what I meant.
You probably knew how my life didn't fix into
That

Stephanie Gray

2016

Poems

Viewers may think that they can process it all

More by this poet

If you look closely enough at a word, you’ll find it contains its opposite*

Stuff I probably did and didn't

Poems

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Viewers may think that they can process it all

More by this poet

If you look closely enough at a word, you’ll find it contains its opposite*

Stuff I probably did and didn't

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