Song of the Selfish Girl

The grass last I looked was still trying.

How can I spend life with myself?

I am tiny—almost new—and I am tired.

Tuesdays my fingers are gilt with honey.

they gather the dust from the floor.

Fridays I find I can’t move. The walls

are milky and anonymous. The curtains are open.

I did that, or I must have done.

I must have let the heat out.

I know it made sense at the time.

Who can say how long the weather will last?

I am a large dirty lake, a tepid naughty heart.

I do not want anyone to love me

but when they don’t, why don’t they?

Song of the Selfish Girl (II)

In early autumn I wake up drooping

like a half-fried egg. It’s no special Tuesday

but I’m thinking about fingernails,

how many I’ve left in the ocean—

how at the beach I don’t care about the gulls

but the feelings I acquire because the gulls exist there.

(Feelings of joy, of confidence,

of expanse and of cinema.)

In the kitchen I consider rudeness:

whether I like it or not?

I have seen so many stiff deer roadside

and I generally haven’t commented.

Like, maybe it’s important

to neglect most things; save up your love.

The cat imagines a mouse. I imagine

an armful of them. I return the milk.

I lie down until the day changes.

I contribute nothing helpful. 

Sophie Van Waardenberg was born in London, England and grew up in Aotearoa New Zealand. She is a recent graduate of the MFA in Creative Writing at Syracuse University, where she served as an editor-in-chief of Salt Hill Journal. Her work is published or forthcoming in RHINO, Copper Nickel, Cordite, Starling, and elsewhere. Her first chapbook-length collection, does a potato have a heart?, was published in the Auckland University Press New Poets series.