This selection, chosen by guest editor Joey Gould, is from The Autobiography of Rain by Lana Hechtman Ayers (Fernwood Press 2024).
Nineteen Things No One Knows About Me (and One They Do)
I once had a brother who was a distant planet. Clear winter
nights I can almost spot his nebula.
I was born dark. Things progressed from there.
My favorite color is swirl. Think van Gogh’s Starry Night.
My favorite bird is a crow but only when there is snow on
the ground. Otherwise, my favorite bird is an astronaut.
Hills cloaked in fog is my best outfit.
My real mother is the moon—a cold stone barren of its own
glow.
My real father was Good Humor, which explains my
obsession with ice cream.
I have been mistaken for the help, but I’ve never worked
that hard.
Salt is my favorite vegetable.
If I could be anything I want when I grow up I would be a
pizza. Everyone loves pizza.
Once I tripped and had to crawl back home. My knees bled
in the pattern of rose petals.
Twice I made the same stupid mistake. It cost me my sanity
and a few subway tokens.
Three times was not a charm for me.
There are days I can’t face. Sometimes weeks. Years.
The mirror me glares.
My name used to be synonymous with sorrow so I changed
it to be synonymous with wool.
Whenever I see the sea my eyes water. Whenever I smell
creamed spinach my mouth waters.
A man once told me I was beautiful. He also said, “God is a
blowfish.”
The rain is my best friend. She knows how to keep a secret
and wash away the evidence.
The answer to every question I ever asked is poetry.
Cat mama, dog mama, sky-watcher, and former New Yorker Lana Hechtman Ayers earned an MFA in Poetry from New England College. She has authored 4 chapbooks, 9 full-length poetry collections, and has poems appearing in or forthcoming from The London Reader, Peregrine, One Art, and others. In her role as managing editor, she’s ushered 150 poetry collections into the world. Lana is a recovering coffee-obsessive whose favorite color is the swirl of van Gogh’s The Starry Night. From her home in Oregon on the unceded land of the Yaq’on people, on clear quiet nights she can hear the Pacific ocean whispering to the moon.
Joey Gould, who served as Sundress Academy for the Arts Spring 2024 Writer in Residence, wrote The Acute Avian Heart (2019, Lily Poetry Review) & Penitent > Arbiter (2022, Lily Poetry Review), along with transfinity (forthcoming from Lambhouse Books). Their recent work appears in Solstice, Memezine, and Defunkt Magazine’s Surreal Confessional Anthology. They write book reviews as Poetry Editor for Drunk Monkeys, and have also placed reviews in Glass: A Journal of Poetry and the Sundress blog.
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This poem By Lana Hechtman Ayers is a kaleidoscope of impressions and feelings. It holds me down while lifting me up. It confuses my soul, because it makes me joyful and mournful at the same moment. But to be sure…it moves me