Poem of the Week: 1.25.24

"Daydream" by Ricky Novaes de Oliveira

DAYDREAM

by Ricky Novaes de Oliveira

Work’s a drag—I’d rather breathe
you in and not let out the smoke
fuming light heads heavy. We 
pack and puck and kiss and flock.
We come together, only for donuts 
in the break room. Inhale or choke:
the fires we suppress with words
in plumes, conversations around 
meaning to say what we will do 
after we feel. A pulse unlike ours. 
Skip. Hold. Breath—but not too long, 
or the sugar wears off. We need
a rush to fight, because the one 
who takes the pain holds it in

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Take a deep breath.

When I was in elementary school, there was one day we had a yoga instructor come in, either due to rain or wildfire interrupting our regularly scheduled physical education of sports and line-dancing. We practiced stretching and meditation, with a focus on the breath. Deep breath in, hold, exhale out. The yoga teacher taught us, with each cycle, to dig deeper into ourselves. Gather the dark, messy lumps of pain and sadness and fear. Feel them in us. Hold them, grasp them, and then exhale them, too, along with the breath. It was fun and imaginative for my young self, but I didn’t realize the essential practices the teacher was trying to instill until much later. I think back to that one class often when I take a deep breath. 

This week’s poem is a Ricky-classic: abstract, arbitrary, and associative. Is there a plot? No! Is there a reason? Maybe! Who cares! I breathe as I write as I feel as I think as I do: I am. So are you. 

An aside that I’ll end with: I’m writing a novella. For class, but, now that I’ve started, for me. It’s in prose aka fiction aka not quite poetry but not not poetry. Are you interested in reading scraps of it? I know this is a space for poetry, and maybe I ought to tell you more about why I think genre divisions are dumb, but I am writing it so maybe it’s worth sharing here. Lmk if you’re interested. Or don’t. You do you. I’ll do me. We’ll figure it out eventually. 

Exhale, Ricky

These random AI-generated images are too good. I’ll be out of a job soon.