Sharing Settings
I began to worry that everything I wrote, I wrote because someone was
listening. Poetry is overheard. Eloquence supposes an audience. The feed
demands one. I tried to keep a diary again, to get that teenage feeling
back, but I could only write about how the internet was the best and worst
thing that ever happened to me. The internet stole my brain. Told me to
share share share. But what if the only things worth sharing were the ones
that languished for months, even years? I thought about Robert Duncan
and shuddered. What about the need for feed my need to feed my need
for feedback? I pressed the fucking lever. Over and over. Give me the pellet! Like like love! I tried to write into my dreams, to tell a truth I wouldn’t
dare post to the feed, but everyone was there, too—the ones from high
school and from right across the street, faces in a book I turned in my
sleep. If I didn’t tag anyone, could I get away with it?
This selection comes from the book, READY FOR THE WORLD, available from Black Lawrence Press. Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Kelly Lorraine Andrews.
Becca Klaver is a writer, teacher, editor, scholar, and literary collaboration conjurer. She is the author of the poetry collections LA Liminal (Kore Press, 2010), Empire Wasted (Bloof Books, 2016), and Ready for the World (Black Lawrence Press, 2020), as well as several chapbooks. A founding editor of Switchback Books, she is currently co-editing, with Arielle Greenberg, the digital poetry anthology Electric Gurlesque. Born and raised in Milwaukee, WI, she is the Robert P. Dana Director of the Center for the Literary Arts at Cornell College and lives in Iowa City.
Kelly Lorraine Andrews is an assistant managing editor for the American Economic Association and an MFA graduate from the University of Pittsburgh. She is the author of the chapbooks Sonnets in Which the Speaker Is on Display (Stranded Oak Press, forthcoming 2019), The Fear Archives (Two of Cups Press, 2017), My Body Is a Poem I Can’t Stop Writing (Porkbelly Press, 2017), I Want To Eat So Many Kinds of Cake With You and Mule Skinner (both out from Dancing Girl Press). Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in [PANK], Prick of the Spindle, Ninth Letter, and elsewhere. You can read more about her past and future publications and look at a slideshow of her cats at her website.
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