Sample Poems by Allison Joseph

Recover

Doesn’t matter if I stumble;
hardly matters if I fall.
I learn by learning how to fumble:

the getting up, the standing tall,
the movement back toward the light.
No matter if I’m feeling small,

my backside flat against each slight.
My gratitude’s in how I play—
determination lets me write

these words. No need to stick, to stay—
escape instead familiar haunts,
old places that lead me astray.

I’m rising up against the taunts
and shaking off all flimsy
claims. I tell myself to tell it slant,

and struggle forth on shaky limbs,
take one more step, go one more mile,
hear those refrains, new sacred hymns.

No need for promises of style—
enough to make it day by day,
sustaining life through grit and guile,

persistent in my clumsy way.
Intact no matter how I crumble,
my learning comes inside the fray.

 
Back in the Day

To get to school, we’d walk
700 miles uphill in the snow,
our shoes held together by rubber
cement and paper clips, blizzards

smacking us in the backs of our
heads if we tried to protest
in our grocery bag dresses
and our prison uniform slacks.

Back then, we had no smart
phones, no phones at all, really—
we communicated through
tin can relays and passenger

pigeon notes, foot messengers,
and, if really lucky, out of work
angels. We didn’t have clocks
or watches or anything

digital—except our fingers,
which we used to keep track
of everything—how many kids
in each family, how many

measles on each kid, how many
chicken pox. And speaking of
chicken, chicken were giant hairy
enormous beasts, and every day we would

pray that our giant chicken
overlords would not kill us
in our sleep, wring our necks
for their pleasure. As for

pleasure, we didn’t have
YouTube or Snapchat, no—
no internet or videogames—
we drew in the dirt with

sticks, smeared our faces
with mud, and ran around
shirtless—boys and girls
both—all dirty muscles

and talons, ice cream dripping from
our filthy fingers, greedy mouths.
Yes, of course, we had ice cream!
What do you think we were, uncivilized?

And You Think Your Campus Is Bad

University of the Fake Seminar.
Pipebomb U. College of the Immaculate
Deception, all transfers from Our Lady

of Loose Morals Junior College
gleefully accepted. Rotting Infrastructure
Institute—engineering the most popular major.

Failure Academy, which, of course,
is entirely online. College of the Clogged Artery,
where one can major only in nutritional science.

Hair Clog U. University of the Severed
Right Thigh, with multiple campuses up
and down the Eastern seaboard. Salmonella

Institute, specializing in culinary arts. Earn your
bachelor’s in Bacterial Studies there. Camel Toe
College of Interior and Fashion Design. University

of the Sucker Punch, of the Crotch Kick,
of the Eternal Panty Raid. Broken Molar U,
School of Excruciating Dentistry.

And lastly, every little girl’s dream
school: Anorexia Nervosa College
of the Military and Liberal Arts.

Across the Prairie

Should you be satisfied with this terrain
of clapboard houses, fallow wizened fields—
the landscape brushing past you on this train?
Should you sit here content with what it yields:
those brittle stalks of corn so far from silk,
those shiny silver silos beckoning,
small-town cafés dispensing coldest milk,
thick slabs of apple pie? You’re reckoning
there’s nothing here for you among these towns
this train will barrel through without a stop—
no counter job, no store, no wedding gown,
no city hall where you’re the only cop.
But who can say your future can’t be found
among this plain’s stark trees, raw autumn ground?