Two Poems by Jillian Weise

Some Reasons I Can’t Write

I can’t write b/c I’m going to the parade.
Fourth of July. Raise your voice.
I can’t raise my voice anymore

about cock rings. Love em or hate em:
it makes no difference to me.
I can’t write b/c Mudge Plunkett

once said, “Maybe this counts for poetry.”
I can’t write b/c there’s no light
in Guest Loft #1 at the Holland Hotel.

Not a single window. I can’t write
b/c I’m teaching online. And nope
I can’t write in the morning.

When somebody says, “I wake at 5 a.m.,”
they are from New York City, a place
where you need to get out of my way.

Come to my reading. Name my people
and get me wasted. I can’t write
in the same room as Favorite Boy.

I can’t write if I’m always going to be
that writer who brings up that thing.
Can’t write with TV. Can’t write

with my baby-free stomach. Can’t write
b/c Sul Ross State is putting on a rodeo
of Annie Get Your Gun. There’s a man

wearing a cape in the alley. Is he poetry
or the law? Vivian Gornick says
all narrators must be reliable.

There goes Favorite Boy
taking one of his reliable pisses.
I can’t write b/c someone else

should do it. She should be openly
disabled and 360 years old
and friends with Larry David.

Then I won’t have to write.
I’ll take a class in stained glass.
Make the window.

Should You Send That Text

Don’t ask me. I’m terrible at it.
Last week I posed the same
question to a friend, who said

“There is nothing in it for you.”
But I am in it. “Okay,” she said.
“Set an alarm for two weeks

and then see how you feel.”
Great advice, I said. I waited
two hours. All my alarms

were going off. So I sent it
and felt victorious and hid
under the bed next to

a dog toy, some dust and
what do you think? Is it love?