Packing UpBy Andrew Yoder
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Packing up
again. Drawing cardboard boxes from their closets, contorting them to cubes and holding with tape. Tape over cut tape from last time and before. A nest of cardboard awaiting packing up, why not packing down from so much. Packing across my home, packing through, around but not out, not into. Packing until all is made full and empty. The Taoist says have by not having. Hold by not holding, and so my home—boxed in chaos—follows. I am no Taoist, but see a truth to their words: the sunrise splays against flaws in my bare walls, finds a way upon wide wood floors, bounces, luminous and voluminous to the corners in play and delight until all empty is made full. Yet packing still to be done. Packing so soon again. Packing away from the sunlight whose warmth makes the leaving only harder. GeorgiaBy Andrew Yoder
This is a poem about healing.
My second apartment was in Georgia a half-way basement in a hill facing away from the sunlight … but rent was cheap! And across the road from work! Alpharetta: a suburb where crosswalks were optional, turning signals too, and my life as pre- roadkill shortened with each crossing. I laugh it off! Georgia. 2000 miles from home. I took the job for work experience and gained it! My weeks stretched 50, 60 hours by choice at first, then expectation. And my apartment! Old pipes in old walls: flooded three times in two years! The last: the night before my move. And each time it rained, insects and worms fled the ground, up! through the floor, up! through the carpet, up! into my room ... I woke to the sound of cockroaches ... (That's how you know they're the big ones.) Woke to the feel of something in my sheets ... (That's how you know.) There: on the pillow! Words form from old curses crashing: 3 A.M., shoe in hand, blood raging barbaric is it dead, godfuck is it dead? (And where are the others?) In the morning, in the kitchen, the kettle: I left the spout open, and what that means. I check inside, see nothing, wash it anyway. I wash the dishes dried on the rack too. I wash the countertops and wash my hands so many times the dish towels are dripping and the skin of my knuckles is cracking so much cleaning it becomes unsanitary. This is my regimen to survive. I don't buy furniture. I don't have guests. (Not between the floods and roaches!) I work longer days to ignore the rest. Now I'm here: London, Ontario. I still wake to the sound of pipe leaks and roach legs, but when I throw the lights they are only in my dreams. Georgia. 2000 miles from home. I took that job for work experience, and gained ... nervous tics and new words to describe the anxieties that follow me now: The swerving cars across the street. The broken pipes and floods. The stretching hours like life is cheap. The worms and swarms of bugs. I laugh it off. This is a poem about healing. Andrew Yoder is a designer from rural Oregon living in Canada to make video games (as one does). His poetry has been published in Whatever Keeps the Lights On and Oregon East.
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