Non-Poetry Poetry

Whenever I've had the urge to write a poem, as of late, I've force myself to create a "short" out of it, instead.  I'm trying to transfer my creative juices into a nonfiction prose outlet in hopes of becoming a better writer.  I'm also trying to just write.  I find myself only wanting to post my good, or approved works, on my blog.  But now I am going to embrace what Ann Lammott calls, "The Shitty First Draft."   So, here is a short, inspired by a poem.  It may or may not be shitty.

Genius.

Chain emails are only endearing if you receive them from an older family member—someone who didn’t have the joy of passing them along throughout their middle school years—those blissfully free years before Myspace, before Facebook—back when AIM was hip and you knew everyone’s email address.   I recently received one about “Great Minds,” which included a few pictures of famous genius’ desks and the clutter that topped them.  Of course Einstein was included in the mix, along with a few other big names that I should know but don’t.   This caused me to glance over at my desk and take mental inventory, and, for the thousandth time that week, pity my poor roommate.  I would never live in a disgusting manner often equated to that of a teenage boy—pop cans and banana peels and pizza boxes—but the organizational habits of my personal life don’t often reflect organization. 

Inventory:

Top shelf: 28 books, 4 for leisure, 24 for class.  A packet of yogurt covered raisens that my mother gave me the last time I was home.  Perhaps it was something to do with the diet, or the surgery, or the taste.  On top of that is the container for the battery from my cell phone along with the receipt.  The battery cost $40 which was a dumb thing to buy, my dad said.  You could have gotten a new phone for that.  But there’s something endearing about my old phone—how the left side of it only works every once and a while, how half of the plastic coating has fallen off the buttons.  2 receipts, the “Entertainment” section from a newspaper from September, and a box of Thank You cards.

Desktop: 33 books, divided into 4 piles that generally fall into the categories of library books, theology books, books already read, and books still being used for class. Three books of poetry lay open at odd angles—two of them Billy Collins and one of them Robert Frost.   A Bible is poking out from under a stack of papers, still bookmarked in Ephesians for my exegesis.  James Joyce is upside-down under a foot-high stack of papers, with Virginia Woolf victoriously stacked on top.  Rightfully so.

Odd and end papers are sandwitched between everything—papers reminding me to make a payment on that trip to Japan, letters from grad schools that I had absent-mindedly clicked a button on their website months ago, who continue to send me odds and ends—encouraging me to attend workshops in Washington on three days’ notice.  Quizzes, papers from that T.A. job I quit, a pack of gum, and some bobby pins.  My glasses.  A nail file.  Ear plugs from the GRE.  A hair brush.

As I load a picture of my desktop as an attachment in response to that email, I include:

And you always wanted me to clean my room.  Little did you know, you were raising a Great Mind.