occasionally something great happens just by itself*
after Kate Greenstreet
The heart of a blue whale is so big that a child can swim
through its veins. Sweet tap-dancing Jesus in a magenta
g-string & all that is holy! What can be more wondrous
& what can be more terrible for a permanently unsatisfied
overachiever. I confess there is not enough poetry in this
damn world for my hungry heart & I confess I am always
hungry. Will I now suffer the mortal consequences of a
relentless Murphy's Law. See I don’t appreciate being
pandered to by a world that has no room for me. The sun
is just a giant spaceship tangerine & life itself is a disease
with a very poor prognosis. I confess my hunger takes me
places & I confess I am always hungry. The problem when
a poet writes is that she is a poet. Not really a dedicated
miserabilist & not motherless but unmothered. If anything
she’s the one dropped into a crevasse of unfathomable
depths & nevertheless the selfsame victim of an extreme
case of emotional climate change. For who hasn’t been
making up a self a body a life? I confess my hunger can be
dangerous & I confess I am always hungry. I was simmering
simmering simmering & I was a hand grenade on the point
of detonation. If we have nothing to say are we robbed of our
right to self-pity. The ocean called me wide awake & salted
& persistent. Do you know the redeeming part of sadness.
Of course it's not important to be right & I am prepared for
amazing things to happen. Repeat repeat repeat. Revise
revise revise. Say on a scale of one to ten one being a tiger
& ten being a flamingo I was a twenty-six. It's not simple
past but simple present. It's not wanted, but want.
*Poet’s Notes:
ONE
“A Blue Whale's heart is so big that a small child can swim through its veins.” —Dave Stopera, from 35 Completely Useless Facts You Need To Know Right Now, via Buzzfeed, 19 June 2013
TWO
“Sweet tap dancing Jesus in a magenta gstring. You just broke my fucking heart. THANK YOU!” —Jello404, a user who left a comment in a fan fiction site
THREE
“…the permanently unsatisfied overachiever…” —Christian Lorentzen on David Foster Wallace, from The Rewriting of David Foster Wallace, via Vulture, 30 June 2015
FOUR
“There is not enough poetry in the world for my hungry heart” —Elephant Tea, via Twitter (@ElephantTea), 18 July 2009
FIVE
“...the mortal consequences of a relentless Murphy's Law” —from a description of the film, Gravity (2013), directed by Alfonso Cuaron, via Wikipedia
SIX
“And as an adult fat, nerdy girl, I don’t appreciate it. I don’t appreciate being pandered to by a super hot blond woman.” —Emily Heller on Taylor Swift’s You Belong With Me, via A.V. Club, 12 November 2015
SEVEN
“The sun is just a giant spaceship tangerine” —Lindsay Zoladz, from Miley Cyrus’s Dead Petz is Hard to Like, or Even Endure, via Vulture, 3 September 2015
EIGHT
“As Jung suggested, life itself is a disease with a very poor prognosis.” —Alan Watts, from his lecture on being God
NINE
“the problem when a poet writes prose is that she is a poet” —Anne Boyer, via Twitter (@anne_boyer), 19 February 2013
TEN
“a dedicated miserablist” —Sasha Frere-Jones on Morrissey, from Manchester, So Much to Answer For, via The New Yorker, 23 October 2013
ELEVEN
“not motherless but unmothered” —Ruth Margalit, from The Unmothered, via The New Yorker, 9 May 2014
TWELVE
“If anything she’s the one dropped into a crevasse, the victim of an extreme case of emotional climate change…” —Mark Kermode on the film, 45 Years (2015), directed by Andrew Haigh, via The Guardian, 30 August 2015
THIRTEEN
“But even before I was a poet, who hasn’t been making up a self?” —Eileen Myles, as interviewed by Adam Fitzgerald, via Interview Magazine, 17 December 2015
FOURTEEN
“I was simmering, simmering, simmering” —Walt Whitman on reading Ralph Waldo Emerson, from Reminiscences of Walt Whitman by John Townsend Trowbridge, as originally published in The Atlantic Monthly, February 1902
FIFTEEN
“...a hand grenade on the point of detonation...” —Phil Klay, from After War, a Failure of Imagination, via The New York Times, 8 February 2014
SIXTEEN
“Only a writer with nothing to say should find himself distracted by the letter in which he says it.” —Robert Bringhurst to Adrienne Raphel, from The Font of Poetry, the Poetry of Font, via The Paris Review, 3 August 2015
SEVENTEEN
“Essentially I was being robbed of my right to self-pity, which is the only redeeming part of sadness.” — Allie Brosh, from Adventures in Depression, via Hyperbole and a Half, 27 October 2011
EIGHTEEN
“...it's not important to be right.” — Allen Ginsberg, in a letter to Diana Trilling dated 15 January 1979, from The Mystery of the Allen Ginsberg-Diana Trilling Feud, via The Daily Beast, 12 June 2013
NINETEEN
“I am prepared for amazing things to happen. I can handle it.” — from the film, Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005), directed by Miranda July
TWENTY
“repeat, repeat, repeat; revise, revise, revise.” —Elizabeth Bishop, from the poem North Haven, written as an elegy for Robert Lowell
TWENTY-ONE
“You treat mistakes as final, but they almost never are.” — Julien Smith, from The Flinch, first published 2011
TWENTY-TWO
“On a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being a tiger and 10 being a flamingo, I was a 26.” — Sunny Gurumayum, from My Mother Called Me A ‘Homo,’ via Thought Catalog, 4 November 2013
TWENTY-THREE
“It is not Simple Past. Simple Present. Not ‘wanted.’ It's ‘want.’” —Aleksandr Voinov and Marquesate, from Special Forces – Soldiers, first published 2009
T. De Los Reyes
T. De Los Reyes is a Filipino poet and the author of And Yet Held (Bull City Press). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry Northwest, Sixth Finch, Variant Lit, West Trade Review, and elsewhere. A 2025 VONA Summer Fellow, she has been nominated for Best of the Net. She is the founder of Read A Little Poetry. Read more of her work at tdelosreyes.com.