PALM
by Ricky Novaes de Oliveira
There's a fine line between holding and having: my palm is etched with fine lines I cross when I hold on too tight when you’re here and when you’re not A cigarette is a fine line destined to be lost in smoke At the courthouse I wait in a fine line the library, too, except there’s no line I’m lying when I say I feel fine I lie down until I find fine I find lime stuck between my molars I find my morals stuck between a fine line between this side and that this right and that wrong and what's left I want you to laugh and I want you to cry and I don’t know which I want more I used to trace lines on my gramma’s wrinkly face probing her age, asking her story, feeling for love She thought it was sweet—until I touched her sagging jowl crossed a line There’s a fine line between who I say I am and who I want to be and waiting in line and getting to the front only to be told that time is up and the line stops here There’s a fine line between savor and saving: A line fine enough to follow but too hard to find between saying too much and ending too
“There’s a fine line between contemporary poetry and stand-up comedy.”
One of my peers said that in a graduate seminar today and it got me thinking. I don’t usually write for laughs, but I welcome a laugh at my writing. I roll my eyes at grand and epic and deep poetry because those types in general usually aren’t—but I fight back against the idea of poetry just being a joke. This line (pun intended) of thinking can be extended to anything we care about or what matters to us; in my opinion, expressing yourself can be poetic or funny or both or neither, and it matters so long as we are listening and even if we aren’t.
“Palm” is a poem I wrote twelve minutes ago. I tried to spit out a poem and then remove myself from it before doing some light edits and moving on. I’m trying to be very intentional with how and why I write, but I keep breaking “rules” I am being taught in grad school: stop using an ambiguous second person; stop being so dramatic with the final lines; start being more specific. One of these days I really ought to internalize what people are telling me to do, because it’s all advice that I agree with—but I get distracted by my hands that do the typing. The folds that have formed in them. When did I get that crevice? That freckle? That anxious feeling? Somewhere along the line (pun intended) I guess.
When I sat down tonight to write, I was just getting back from a poetry reading from a poet I immensely admire. One piece of advice they offered to us their audience was to treat poetry (and art in a broad sense) like an outfit in the mirror: if it doesn’t “fit” or look right to you, change until it does. Try a different combination. Switch it up. Or go back to an outfit that worked. All that matters is how you feel when you’re wearing, and you’ll know when you feel right. Or at least good enough.
I tried to wear “Palm” in the mirror, and it felt fine (pun intended). I hope it’s good enough for you, too.
Intentionally, Ricky