Posted byMegan Grant, GD Poetry Reader for 5.2
When I find myself bemoaning the five hours and nine minutes between my friend Chrissy and me, I read her poetry out loud to myself. I sit cross-legged in front of my bleached-wooden bookshelf and run my fingers across novels and memoirs until they rest on Issue 3.1 of Gandy Dancer. Chrissy’s poems are printed on page thirty-one; the journal bends open to her.
I have memorized the degree of emphasis of each syllable, the number of milliseconds between every dash and line break. The stanzas sound like Chrissy, despite our voices’ differing timbres. However, no matter how many times I recite her poems, both the ones she wrote in college and the new ones she’s written while pursuing her MFA a UMass, I still cannot comprehend what it means to be, “subatomic reactions daisychained in fractals,” or to, “supernova against your stringbean cilia.” I can’t quite figure out all of what the poems are saying. Continue reading