Have I Made it Yet? by Kate Ross
Kate Ross’ poem “Have I Made it Yet?” appears in the 2016 volume of the University of Colorado Honors Journal.
It’s been a while since someone has ruined me but around you I am formless, tepid.
I could tell you that, too – step outside this paper fort because you told me to be more conversational in my choruses and I told you to stop touching me. When you called me the smartest person you’d ever met, was it your plan to make me the opposite? To ask me up to your room, watch as I followed in front of you. We sat on the edge of your bed discussing the routes of artistry. You told me the key was connection between artist and listener, but you didn’t even get that right and you laughed and called me adorable in a tone that said ‘you’re wrong’. I told you it’s not so monotheistic; connection is between the listeners. It’s the crowd agreeing with itself over a prompt that the artist provides. I could feel you imagining. My shoulders, chest, how you would reveal them. The dimensions of my waist, measured by your hands.
But I was still thinking about Seattle swimming in Maypole circles around Kurt Cobain. And the floors and walls outside these walls had dropped off and we were a tower but I was lead, cracking the carpet beneath me, escaping unsuccessfully,
while the sound of your false surrender just grinned
“it’s not like that, you mean so much more to me.”
I first titled this, “Industry Poem,” and my throat swelled because I knew I would have to admit it. I retitled it, “not Industry Poem,” but your name is still there, bruising the page and your face is still in my face in my head, skin pleated like a bulldog and huffing.
See this and more at: http://www.colorado.edu/honorsjournal/archives/2016
Find out about submitting your work or applying to join the Honors Journal Editorial Board at honorsjournal.com