Poor Claudia published poetry, prose and conversations online and in print from 2009 to 2018.

Kelly Schirmann

Four Poems

  • Supermoon
  • Popular Music
  • Believe in Yourself
  • Inventory

Supermoon

we are crying
in the old car home

like an ocean bed
in the open air

we take a trip
toward a signal

from a great space
there are so many

I am indifferent
as a gift

I hold the mirror
as a comfort

to the one after
the weird fruit

blooming in winter
the us that gave

the us that
easy

Popular Music

that decade
ronald reagan

cooled his jets
the airwaves

bore me like
philosophy

on a houseboat
in california

the brown trail
in the backyard

made an infinity
of the loneliness

you abandon in age
& then find again

in age
my pet walked

alongside me
in little pants

what humiliated me
spread itself

into sex
now

I'm ambivalent
for what's not vehicle

on the radio
there is no you

really
my hair

gets longer
by the photograph

we write books
about america

our whole lives
our hearts

are temperatures
my breasts

go on
ahead of me

my whole life
promising

a big return
& several roads

Believe in Yourself

if I am a gun
& you are a gun

what do you mean
when you say protector

put a trampoline
in your yard

yard browns
under

the trampoline
its instrument

if I am a gun
& you are a radio

what are we doing
moving in together

all day long
I am having ideas

they are tiny sandwiches
I give to the sky

when we are ready
our empty stomachs

will reach for it
simultaneously

we will sleep
like parking lots

in the san fernando valley
lonely & placid

technically
the same

Inventory

what do I know
enough to keep

repeating
very little

beyond self
or what sucks

I can comply
with humanity

I can wake up
& watch out

this new window
like a shoulder

I can maintain
a physical address

for my trauma
beginning this morning

I want to be giving
my long pink body

to a big idea
like a vote

I want to be slanting
one way or another

& waterproof
everyone's lives

are so boring
in their devastation

like a brown field
with beautiful

ordinary cattle
the planets

are meaningless
the coral reefs

don't need me
like you did

we are as lonely
as we are beautiful

hands in each other's
growing hair

Kelly Schirmann

Kelly Schirmann is a poet, musician, & visual artist from California. Her poems have appeared in Spork, Mud Luscious, Titular, Metazen, Illuminati Girl Gang, & elsewhere. She writes & records music as HEADBAND, & sings in the band Young Family (with Sam Pink). She currently lives in Portland, Oregon. You can check out her musical collaborations, hand-lettered broadsides, & poems about water at mythixtape.tumblr.com.