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    This Poem's Not Good Enough

    Jessica Arconti


    1. 

    Trying to fight the exponential

    degree of sentimental.

    They say our generation is overly

    nostalgic, especially,

    after a couple glasses of wine.

    And we try to write

    prose, poems, emails actually

    now, instead of letters

    undocumented, spell-checked,

    but unedited, then scientifically

    discredited.

    Excessively schooled, now

    under-ly educated, we

    can’t express a feeling. Looking

    for only punctuation,

    personality, conversational, managerial

    parental, environmental, familial

    municipal mistakes. Everyday life scenes

    we should retake rethink remind

    ourselves then reword, review

    relax, and of course,

    regret

    most things. 


    2. 

    But I know how to, well, not really

    but at least I can partially

    portray signal transduction or

    mechanisms of proto-oncogenes

    together fighting

    cancer causing tumors. 


    3. 

    It’s just this cataracts

    infection— please give me

    oral-topical prescription

    that’ll counter-act blindness

    to any thing but

    imperfection. 


    I am. Am I? The only one in solitude

    unable to express the degree to which I—

    I can’t say because I am…

    we are under scrutiny constantly,

    especially after

    one too many glasses of wine. 


    But has anyone ever sat her down

    enlisted the masses, filed a

    suit, written in print,

    called a meeting, with evidence, for the public

    to expose, to stress

    her understanding, make her aware

    of the extent to how

    ubiquitously she is loved? 


    4. 

    Underground, underexposed

    under-the-skin wars

    no longer amongst countries

    but instead, our

    personalities—when is the last time

    someone valued your

    abnormalities? 


    How intelligent she is, how many

    she has touched, how often she

    is taken for granted. Has anyone

    sat you down, made you

    memorize, regurgitate, or at least

    calculate

    how small you

    are amongst billions

    of years, eras of lives? And upon

    standard deviation, regretional

    analysis, and scientific method

    revealed  your world-altering

    significance?

    How much you matter, how far

    you, alone, reach

    through others,

    beyond your time.  You

    always laugh at a trip, or a fall

    of someone else’s—

    it makes it lighter. 


    5. 

    I worry I haven’t—I mean “have not”

    written enough

    big words

    in this poem. It’s prose

    or no, just elementary

    attempted poetry with

    a microscopic capacity

    missing remotely extensive

    eloquence of vocabulary

    taken from an online

    dictionary. It’s—it is—inessential

    disconnected, inconsequential

    not experimental and, again,

    recklessly sentimental.  


    PS-- Also, lacking

    omnipresent terminology and

    breakthrough unrealized

    human tendencies.

    Express it less

    un-deeply, more metaphors

    simply measly— more imagery

    or make it

    into a trilogy? Oh yes, please! Dense

    with catastrophe. As is, it’s

    making experts

    queasy. 


    “Oh, the apostrophe? What?

    It ‘s me? Naïveté, that’s

    impossible. I’m incapable

    of hypocrisy.” 


    6.

    Oh, will anyone please give me

    something educational—how to

    make simple inspirational, permitting

    overly sentimental acceptable

    even after

    a couple glasses of wine

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