Meghan O'Rourke Poems

Even now I can't grasp "nothing" or "never."
They're unholdable, unglobable, no map to nothing.
...

Stone by stone, body by body in the grass:
For this we trade our lone compass,
...

Grew up on the Jersey Shore in the 1970s.
Always making margaritas in the kitchen,
always laughing and doing their hair up pretty,
...

Because I was born in a kingdom,
there was a king. At times
the king was a despot; at other times,
...

Inventing a horse is not easy.
One must not only think of the horse.
One must dig fence posts around him.
...

I tried to live that way for a while, among
the trees, the green breeze,
chewing Bubblicious and by the edge of the pool spitting it out.
...

Was it like lifting a veil
And was the grass treacherous, the green grass
...

We had a drink and got in bed.
That's when the boat in my mouth set sail,
my fingers drifting in the shallows of your buzz cut.
...

You can only miss someone when they are present to you.

The Isle of the Dead is both dark and light.
...

What you did wasn't so bad.
You stood in a small room, waiting for the sun.
At least you told yourself that.
I know it was small,
but there was something, a kind of pulped lemon,
at the low edge of the sky.

No, you're right, it was terrible.
Terrible to live without love
in small rooms with vinyl blinds
listening to music secretly,
the secret music of one's head
which can't be shared.

A dream is the only way to breathe.
But you must
find a more useful way to live.
I suppose you're right
this was a failure: to stand there
so still, waiting for—what?

When I think about this life,
the life you led, I think of England,
of secret gardens that never open,
and novels sliding off the bed
at night where the small handkerchief
of darkness settles over
one's face.
...