Whitney Jones Olson Poems

i am taken aback;
i question your strength,
your revelations;
your integrity.
...

She hears the Carmina Burana behind her eyes,
the oratorio asks to be pulled from her / into text /
She breaks the law two hours after waking,
sits in linen through the afternoon / pontificates /
...

Maple Marble your fine overtones,
like Marshall Fields in Chicago
where you wrote an essay of political analogy,
and became The Pro,
...

Standing outside in the American evening
I am at once cold, naked, exposed;
tired of making excuses for myself, behavior, and
compatriots to these Academic walls,
...

And yet, a refuge form the cold shoulders
I find you. America!
Land of mad rambling saints, and
drizzling caramel abounding fruits plentiful;
...

Your, soulless sycophants, carelessly toss aside my indifference.
Your, precious pedagogues, misunderstand.
Your, noncompliant nihilists, dissemble as I peer.
Your, meritorious malcontents, shield me in their desolation.
...

Oh, God-sick America, bless your heart,
You sincere sweet ragged old mistress,
Of paradoxes, duplicity, soaring birth rates,
And the need to legally tranquilize,
...

Shelter me free in my aberrations, America.
Let me consume in the fleshes of your brilliant tortured boys;
Let me revel in the pirouettes of your naïve moonlit girls;
Indulge me these, America.
...

Just an arch in the spine of a widow –
Just the hem of a skirt in the distance –
Just the stain of disappointment in his headlights –
Just the shape of your sigh in the mirror –
...

As your focus is narrow, so you may perfect but little
a camel from a Biblical gate
As your focus is full, so you may stitch their shrouds
As your focus is nothing, so you may birth + be + become
...