poetry

This Weird Moment

/ amynotdorft / 4 Comments

It’s been a minute. Or three or four. Where (when?) the hell are we right now?

Over a year ago, Meta decided that I was under the age of 13 (despite being in my 30’s and having had a Facebook for longer than 13 years) and disabled my Instagram and Facebook accounts. I was given no ability to argue my point aside from sending Meta a photograph of my identification, which… no thanks.

To be honest, I was already on the verge of deleting my social media anyway; I’m fairly certain the algorithm was already deprioritizing my posts for inscrutable reasons (even friends and family were struggling to find them), I was sick of the AI scraping, and the environment was just atrocious for my mental health. I hesitated for a long time because, although it fed my insecurities and devoured hours of my time, I had social connections there. Most of my friends and family only keep in touch via Facebook, and I was connected to a supportive community of poets on Instagram. I liked making and sharing poetry and art there.

When Meta did the difficult part for me, I decided to view it as an opportunity to leave the whole thing behind. In some ways it has been isolating, but it has also been freeing, allowing me to re-contextualize myself as the agent of my own life rather than its performer.

Since then, I haven’t done a lot of writing. I won’t lie, letting go of the poetry account with years-worth of poetry and connections, has been demotivating. I did have an honourable mention in a local poetry contest, and I’ve had other quiet successes not related to social media, but it still smarts watching something you built get taken away with no real recourse (by a company that probably also scraped it for AI training to replace you).

I have a bad habit of relying on extrinsic motivation to drive my efforts. Years ago, I wrote 53 Ganymede as a serial so I’d have an obligation to finish the next episode. Social media fed into that desire for external validation, so much so that I did try to make a Bluesky account recently (which I deleted two days later because, in my opinion, it isn’t substantially different than any of the other platforms — there’s more pet pictures and art, but it’s still way too easy to doomscroll and ultimately still encourages divisive, attention-seeking behaviour.)

So what now? What’s this post all about?

I don’t know. This is a weird moment, I wish we all acknowledged that more. Technological products and services are being developed at a pace no one’s ever seen before. All of us alive right now have been through so much change, so quickly, that there’s no way our brains, our behaviours, our understanding can keep up. We’re all children in this moment, barely-literate in one of our primary mediums of communication and community.

As a writer, my head is spinning. I want to create, I want to connect, I want to share, I want to just be. I don’t want to market myself. I refuse to be a product, even though I know that right now, it’s impossible not to be. Even here, even this little space I think of as mine, I’m providing “value” for some company. I know it’s all being fed into the insatiable algorithms and LLMs, it’s providing ad revenue and clicks and attention.

So I’m just going to make stuff. And sometimes I’m going to share that stuff or give it away. Sometimes, if I have to, maybe I’ll sell it. And I’m going to make mistakes and course-correct, and live within all the parts of my mostly-unobserved life, especially if they don’t generate a fucking cent of value.

And sometimes I’m going to come back here and shout into the void. Because I want to believe someone’s listening maybe, or maybe because I’m arrogant enough to think I have something worth listening to, but mostly because… for better or for worse, haunting this vast, intangible space from the remote barriers of our screens is a part of life now, and I want to believe it’s not all bad.

From her least favourite animal

/ amynotdorft / Leave a comment 
My daughter comes home from school
and says to me: "Mom, during attendance
my teacher asked us our favourite animals."

"Neat," I say, "You said cat, didn't you?"

"Yes Mom," she says, "but Ben said humans.
And Teacher said those are her least favourite.
She said humans are responsible for 
too many bad things in the world."

'Favourite things are people's opinions,"
I remind her, but neither of us are satisfied.

So I say:

"I think a lot of people would agree 
with your teacher. I used to. But I think
that it's a little bit of an excuse."

"What do you mean?" she asks.

I remind her of the time she was struggling
to learn subtraction and she tried
to escape through a door labelled:
"Bad at math."

Because when we believe there's something
about us that cannot change, we can shed
our fear of failure by refusing to grow.
If we're just bad at something, there's no point
practicing to get better. If humans do nothing
but harm, then what is the point of 
of fighting for, or believing in, or expecting
anything different for the future.

Look, I don't need to expound upon 
humanity's sins to her; 
she is already familiar with them.
My daughter was born into a country
where she cannot help but walk over
the bones of other children, slaughtered
by people who looked like her. At nine years
old my daughter knows the words genocide,
and systemic racism, income inequality,
global warming, mass extinction,
she knows she has inherited a violent legacy
she never asked for. And before your protest
that she is too young, I'd like to remind you
that many children younger than her
learn these concepts at gunpoint, with teachers
like hunger and disease,
standing over their parents' graves.

She learns in a loving mother's voice,
I hold her hands as we unpick knots together,
and when she cries, it is never alone.

Are we her teacher's least favourite animal?

My daughter knows the bloodprice of profit,
knows the human sacrifices that make
a billionaire, but I remind her of the little
vegan grocery we shop from whose owners
refused to raise prices despite inflation,
who break every rule of "good business"
in the interest of being "good neighbours."

Are they her teacher's least favourite animal?

I tell her the people of the Wet'suwet'en Nation 
put themselves in the line of fire, 
stand for days on end facing persecution,
to defend the water and land that nourishes us.

Are they her teacher's least favourite animal?

She watches documentaries with her dad
about the researchers and engineers 
developing the latest clean-energy hopefuls,
trying to force triangular economies
into more sustainable circles.

Are they her least favourite animal?

We talk about how poverty is decreasing,
along with infant mortality. About increases
in conservation and species-protections..
How, statistically, the world is becoming 
a better place. It isn't enough yet, but
people are still working to improve it.

Are they her teacher's least favourite animal?

Her aunt sends pictures of her new baby cousin.

Is he her teacher's least favourite animal?

Scientists have developed a vaccine for malaria.

Are they her teacher's least favourite animal?
Mosquitoes kill half a million children every year.
Could her teacher think of no animal more
deserving of the title of "least favourite" than us?

Mosquitoes are only doing what is in their nature,
but human nature is the ability to change.
Our species' entire evolutionary strategy is hinged
on our ability to override our own programming.
A mosquito cannot chose to spare a child,
but we can.

I ask my daughter what she thinks the world
could look like, if we didn't treat each other
like our least favourite animal.

She smiles, satisfied, and already
I can see the future changing.

dark side

/ amynotdorft / Leave a comment 
The Moon is tidally locked,
which is a fancy way of saying
that she cannot turn her head.
We tell her she is beautiful,
but she wonders what it means
when we've only seen one side —
the one that shines the brightest.
She worries what we would think
if we only knew how much
she loves her darkest self.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Ck9no3aNkES/

worry

/ amynotdorft / Leave a comment 
I am not afraid of bees
or wasps or flies
or other things
that sting and bite
no, the thing that fills
my heart with fear
is the elusive 
buzzing in my ear
that whispers:

what if what if what if

Haunted

/ amynotdorft / Leave a comment 
My house is haunted by a little girl,
a waist-length tangle of brown hair,
and wide eyes the colour of an angry ocean.
Her mother tells stories about those eyes:
lids thrown like blinds from the moment
she was born, greedy for light and life,
tricking the nurses into adding hours to her age.

I feel those eyes upon me a lot these days.

No one else knows that she is here,
but in those rare twilight moments
when I am permitted my own company
she follows me with questions:

Where am I? she asks me,
and: tell me a story,
and: remember when?

I don't know, I tell her,
and: I don't know any,
and: not anymore.

Then she clenches her fists, her tiny body
rocking with disappointment and rage.

You lost me, she accuses.

Maybe, I say.

Bring me home, she pleads.

How? I ask, even though I know
the steps to this waltz,
can see the circles worn into the floorboards
and feel them in the soles of my feet.

Open your eyes, she says.

I am.

Where is your wonder? Your awe? 

I gave them away, I tell her.

So find more.

I shake my head.

Open your eyes.

They are open! But all I can see
is pain and fear and suffering and
emptiness and death. 

Open them wider.

It hurts. They cannot open as wide as yours.

Be brave.

I am not.

Tell me a story.

My eyes flicker to the bookshelf
and the books I can no longer open.
To long-expired daydreams left 
to curdle and rot.
How do I tell the girl who loved
nothing more than stories 
that I am too afraid to navigate them?

Be brave, she says, but she has never 
choked on the words of a page,
never drowned in the images of a screen.
She has yet to learn that she is not the hero.
That sometimes the hero leaves people behind. 
That you don't know until you turn the page
who will be lost and who will be left 
to mourn them.

And so she can't understand 
why I cannot
turn
the
page.

Please, she begs.

Please, I echo.

My house is haunted by a little girl
whose greedy eyes,
wide and angry like the ocean,
devoured so much
she forgot how to close them,
and became a woman who could only
look away.

@amnotpoetry

city girl

/ amynotdorft / Leave a comment 
Give me the living lights
of these high-rise constellations,
and not just the pilgrimage of 
a billion lonely suns.
Give me the astringent musk
of a dozen factory workers
on the crowded bus home;
let our lungs pass oxygen
like relay runners
on the same team.
I'd rather be kept awake
by the drunken testament
to life on the other side
of paper-thin walls,
than spend my nights
pretending the universe
is emptier
than it already is.

Mom, why do you swear so much?

/ amynotdorft / Leave a comment 
Because it's the only thing I've got 
to prove I'm not a child
aside from thirty some-odd years 
and years aren't quite as heavy
as they like to say so I'm afraid
my soul might be so light
it will float away before
its time and leave me here behind 
counting heartbeats like the ticks
of a clock always keeping pace
unable to remember when last
it raced when last it broke the rules
I've too few sins beneath my belt
too little skin beneath my nails
and too much across my knees
that never knew the pavement's
kiss and so continue to insist
that I've not bled enough for 
this right of passage and these
silly words increase my pulse
and weigh me down enough
that maybe I won't take off
in search of the conclusion
to the story of my youth
but mostly

because I fucking want to.

love language: a burning haibun

/ amynotdorft / Leave a comment 
I love in apples: crisp-fresh, candied, or wrapped in my great-grandma's pastry. Her recipes were my first language, a silent tongue of peace; when have fruit and spice ever spoken of hatred? But making pie crusts with my mother taught me that words are not enough, some things have to be attempted and failed over and over until the knowledge trusts your hands so well as to call them home. When I bake a pie, every bite is a kiss years in the making. It gives without expectation. I can think of no purer way to love than this.

I love in apples: crisp-fresh, candied, or wrapped in my great-grandma's pastry. Her recipes were my first language, a silent tongue of peace; when have fruit and spice ever spoken of hatred? But making pie crusts with my mother taught me that words are not enough, some things have to be attempted and failed over and over until the knowledge trusts your hands so well as to call them home. When I bake a pie, every bite is a kiss years in the making. It gives without expectation. I can think of no purer way to love, than this.

My great-grandma's recipes
were my first language.
Fruit and spice 
taught me enough:
to trust your hands,
to call them home.
A pie is a kiss
without expectation,
pure love.

My great-grandma's recipes
were my first language.
Fruit and spice 
taught me enough:
to trust your hands,
to call them home.
A pie is a kiss
without expectation,
pure love.

grandma's first language
fruit and spice taught me to trust
to expect pure love

(note: if you're not familiar with a burning haibun, it's a really fun format where you write a passage in prose and then erase portions to make a poem. From there you continue to erase until you are left with a haiku)

between

/ amynotdorft / Leave a comment 
Closed doors
          are so much more
                               enticing
            than open ones.
Odd or familiar,
          cherished or abandoned,
                             they lead everywhere
                     all at once.
Infinite constellations
              collapse like dominos
                               into singularity with
                 the twist of a knob.
What am I afraid of?
                Flowers pressed to paper
                                       lose the vibrancy
                        of impermanence.
Let me exist in the
               moments between moments
                                   in the space between
                      thought and action.
Let me persist
                forever in the breath
                           before the door begins
                      to open.