BECCA KLAVER
The Slumber Party |
Kate was playing Molly
breaking up w/ her boyfriend (who knows if he’s real) It made Lorraine cry 4 real & then Lara caught the sads They call this “flows of affect” —contagion where each girl’s tears are more viral than the last (or they’re plastic beads. . . .) Your feelings got in my eye They’re mine now & crusted |
The Last Nostalgia
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The 90s will be the last nostalgia
We have left the material world The 90s will be the last nostalgia Got your prints at the pharmacy The 90s will be the last nostalgia The insides were all smoky The 90s will be the last nostalgia The body, the marker, the knife The 90s will be the last nostalgia Bell-bottoms are back back back back back The 90s will be the last nostalgia I can see straight into their future The 90s will be the last nostalgia In the bathroom stall with your Discman The 90s will be the last nostalgia There’s a light in your eyes that I used to see The 90s will be the last nostalgia Who are you and who you thought you’d be The 90s will be the last nostalgia Can never remember what happened online The 90s will be the last nostalgia Can you miss what you can’t touch The 90s will be the last nostalgia Get off an exit early, cruise the streets The 90s will be the last nostalgia I don’t believe that anybody feels the way I do The 90s will be the last nostalgia Time slow as a song, and pulsing The 90s will be the last nostalgia The sarcasm of the earnest The 90s will be the last nostalgia Don’t let the daze go by The 90s will be the last nostalgia I’m not so lonely anymore The 90s will be the last nostalgia I’m never so lonely The 90s will be the last nostalgia Bright nook at the bookstore The 90s will be the last nostalgia Napster and shoplifting The 90s will be the last nostalgia Still can’t see the fiber optics The 90s will be the last nostalgia Couldn’t see the lake The 90s will be the last nostalgia Could hear it roar The 90s will be the last nostalgia Make a wish, it counts thrice The 90s will be the last nostalgia Once for then, twice for now now now The 90s will be the last nostalgia I stroke your interface The 90s will be the last nostalgia And it is not enough The 90s will be the last nostalgia Like disco lemonade The 90s will be the last nostalgia It’s hard to get it right The 90s will be the last nostalgia I’ll just read it from my diary The 90s will be the last nostalgia I am a responsible recycler of images The 90s will be the last nostalgia Put the best one at the start of the tape The 90s will be the last nostalgia Rewind when you pass the house again The 90s will be the last nostalgia Take me all the way The 90s will be the last nostalgia Got a slacker time fetish The 90s will be the last nostalgia We’re done feeling that way |
A Better Son/Daughter
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It is the final year of my 20s
and it is Oprah’s final season because you don’t need a TV show when you are everywhere And your WWOD rubber bracelet hugs the equator tight I spend the 1:00 a.m. hour with Oprah waiting for Andy to get home I don’t really watch it but I like to keep my eye on her and tell her to stop it just stop it when she doles out the laws and purses her lips at the studio audience at the other side of the screen ( ( ) ) The first song I want to talk about is Rilo Kiley’s “A Better Son/Daughter” which begins in suffocation and ends with a ship coming in This is a song for girls in their 20s because of the part about The lows are so extreme that the good seems fucking cheap and the part about And sometimes when you’re on You’re really fucking on ( ( ) ) Well the girl she got up anyway And went to work And life wasn’t terrible it was just life And sometimes just life And just going to work And stuff like fluorescent bulbs And no windows And stuff like same bathroom every day And my chest kinda hurts And I wiped out on the bridge Will make you afraid of things (planes, cars, people) While you’re less afraid of other things (eyes, hands, people) And sometimes it’s nothing at all but the daily motion of it the bloated wheel of quotidian that’s enough to make you afraid because there are grooves and you’ve got to get out of them but you can’t because they’re the Grooves of Life they’re there for a reason And down there where the cattails wave And up there where the sky just changes changes changes You never go And you end up afraid ( ( ) ) I lived in LA and Milwaukee in my early 20s I lived in Chicago in my mid 20s I live in Brooklyn in my late 20s The mid 20s are the worst and I hope it’s true what they say about 30s being easier than 20s but all I know so far is about 20s and the mid 20s are the worst Because at first You might end up being anybody! And then at the end of the decade it’s very Ah shit, I can say whatever I want And I didn’t magically become an astronaut But I can still say whatever I want. . . . I’ll say that I’m an astronaut ( ( ) ) On the pics Caolan put on Picasa Of my 29th birthday party She wrote As regards me and a white squirrel The beast shimmered at the foot of the sacred birthday tree . . . then vanished as surely as childhood innocence vanishes as we pass from girlhood (ages 0 - 28) to womanhood (ages 29 - 30). Becca spread her arms in bittersweet anguish, despairing with Diderot that we all die at 29. I don’t know what she means about Diderot and I should probably ask her but right now I’m focused on this idea that you’re a girl till you’re 29 and this is something that Arielle and I talk about in our Plath essay that you could read by googling it and this is something I’ve disagreed with other women about Women whom I’m calling women because they say that these people in their 20s who are not guys should be called “women” out of respect and I sometimes do that But mostly I say “girl” because I love girls Girls are the best Girls laugh in the world’s face and if they get suffocatingly melancholy like Jenny Lewis they get through it by imagining themselves one day getting through it One day being thirty Young and old enough to have all the answers ( ( ) ) Oprah does not control the weather but she controls good and bad sometimes like Oprah I can’t always control my body There are girls and girls and girls of it I like it with a u, I like it with a grrrrrr I will try to pass through right before your eyes This is a rite of passage Expiration midnight You were here You just saw it |
BECCA KLAVER is the author of the poetry collection LA Liminal (Kore Press, 2010) and several chapbooks, including Merrily, Merrily (Lame House Press, 2013) and Nonstop Pop (Bloof Books, 2013). She was a founding editor of Switchback Books and is currently co-editor of the multimedia anthology Electric Gurlesque (Saturnalia Books, forthcoming 2016) and co-host of The Real Housewives of Bohemia podcast. She was born in Milwaukee, lives in Brooklyn, and went to school at the University of Southern California, Columbia College Chicago, and Rutgers University.
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