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is this anything

~ a compendium, by Nancy Coughlin

is this anything

Category Archives: poem

How It Was (a poem)

20 Wednesday Nov 2013

Posted by is this anything in autism, poem

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Tags

autism, grief, Hannah, helplessness, poem

How It Was

If I’d flung her through the window that night,
no one would have known I’d done it. For how many
windows had she smashed by now? How many walls
had she cratered? We lived in an asteroid storm.

(A feeble joke we told our friends: that we
could gauge our daughter’s growth by the height
of the holes.) I’d pinned her down—embrace turned
tourniquet–on our bare, midnight mattress. But

I could have let her go, and when she charged,
I could have shoved her hard against the one
broad pane not yet replaced with plexiglas.
Her only chaperon: the air. Only sidewalk,

her release. But if the window didn’t break?
Or didn’t break enough, and left her equipoised,
and only bleeding? We thought her unassailable,
thought shards of glass, like all of us, were barred

from ingress. (Was her very skin oblivious?)
However founded in calamity, she seemed
unscathable. I seemed to think she might
cavort through fire unburned, clash with a car

without breaking a bone, drink poison and feel
merely sated. Not that I had ever thought
of burning her, breaking her bones, feeding her
poison. Understand, if you possibly can,

that I ached to be the one who leapt
into the fire, snatched her from the line
of traffic, forced the ipecac down. It flew
at me just once (no–twice)—this fierce retort:

throw her out the window. This urge—more howl
than wish–I let it go. For I knew windows well
by now. They’re not like in the movies. She would fall
halfway through and dangle. Is there a heart

that wouldn’t vaporize at once, rather than
abet that second push? …And so she’d end up hurt,
not dead. (Beyond my scope, this lone barbarity:
to make her feel worse than she already did.)

You Need to Know This (a found poem)

18 Monday Nov 2013

Posted by is this anything in found poem, poem

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Tags

found poem, men and women, poem, sex

romance_1920_-_sydney__keane

You Need to Know This (a found poem)

Enlarge your pole with wonder pills
Cumming has never been stronger
Your package is set to grow
Your love tool is set to thrill
Nothing beats a huge stick
You need to know this

Disappointed at your lack of performance?
Stop being a nervous wreck
Don’t embarrass yourself in bed again
Get the manhood you’ve always desired
Big self-esteem makes her crazy
Be the master of the bed

Get huge and scare off the competition
Scare people with your tool today
Rectify your manhood issues easily
Impress all in the locker room
Power pack your tool in your pants
Size DOES matter

Smell sweeter below the belt
Evoke your girl’s delight
Make her the queen of the world
Stop leaving your partner dissatisfied
Give her the best of you
Have the pecker of her dreams

She will surely pounce on you
She will not be able to resist
She will want MORE of you
Hitting her g-spot everytime
Make her come again and again
Never let her down again

Attract the RIGHT girls with wonder pills
Your erection will become huge
So hard you can break an egg
Every cunt is tight after having that size
Hear ladies scream in bed
Leave a lasting impression

Rock her hard on your first date
Turn her into a pleasure machine
Give her more of your love rod
Give her what she deserves
She’ll swallow if you take this
Because she wants it

This is totally unbelievable
Certified by doctors
Fantastic results for length and girth
Why waste any more time
This is not a myth
You need to know this

Another letting go (a poem)

16 Saturday Nov 2013

Posted by is this anything in poem

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Tags

acceptance, marriage, poem

Another letting go

“The one that got away.” The fish that broke free
of the hook. It’s a powerful cliché. It’s the perfect
crushed-into-scrap-metal metaphor for what we all
feel, deep down, how much we worship and long
for whatever we’ve lost. It’s seldom the one who
stayed whom we love most, but the one who, like
the prodigal son, escaped us. My husband got away.
He got away, perhaps, for good. He’s sitting five
feet to my left, reading a book about the Middle
East, but he’s lost to me, and I to him. Not that
I’ll ever tell him this. No, we’ll go on, and we’ll
be happy. Still, it’s a sad thing to give up on
someone, to leave him to drown. But it’s what
you have to do in the end. Henry and I had no
other choice. On his side: I’ve become crazy,
or at the very least, incomprehensible. On mine:
I had to let my husband go because I could see,
far too clearly, that he had already gone. (Yes,
yes, but how arrogant I am to assume he’ll
drown. Everyone knows that fish swim fine.)

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