REVERSE EVALUATION > POETRY
Was up from three to five again.
Took a few Zolpidem. They didn’t help.
I’m tired of this insomnia.
I tell people. They say they can’t sleep either.
I say I have insomnia. They ask if I’ve tried magnesium.
I smile.
You know, I have read poems in high-tier journals with whimsical lyric
turning insomnia into a pearl sky.
Those poems make me sick.
There is nothing beautiful about it.
It deserves plainspoken English. Or
an image: a bluff.
See the bluff? It’s there.
I lie awake with a mouth full of rocks.
The sky is dark. The ocean is violent.
I watch the waves crash. They make no sound.
I can’t spit the rocks from my mouth.
But I try.
I can’t choke on them either.
I get a rush of thoughts to go all the way with it.
I get them.
But I don’t have the guts.
I don’t have the guts.
I didn’t go all the way with it today.
My day ended with strawberry-rhubarb pie on the front porch.
I like strawberry-rhubarb pie.
I love her more.
It tasted better than the rejection from a Berlin journal
I woke to find in my email.
I sent them a packet of my best poems.
After that rejection, I sent my chapbook to a small press in Ontario.
It was rejected five minutes later: appreciate the opportunity! but going to pass on this;
sorry …
I wanted to send a note saying: thanks for reading.
But I didn’t.
I am tired. I have to teach soon.
It’s my forty-fifth birthday.
Maybe this year will be better. Maybe not.
One day I won’t be here. That thought comforts me.
It feels cool like those rocks on my tongue.
It sits in my belly like that pie.
I see the waves below.
Ryan Di Francesco (he/him) is a neurodivergent Canadian writer and teacher. His writing has appeared in The Toronto Star and is published or forthcoming in Acta Victoriana, Soliloquies Anthology, Pinhole Poetry, Pacific Review, ELJ Editions, The Pit Periodical, Milwaukee Avenue Messenger, Shoegaze Literary, and elsewhere. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Shadow and Sax, an independent literary and arts press. His chapbooks include Skeleton Mine Disaster (Bottlecap Press), Mirage of Burning Things (Parlyaree Press), and The Paper Hound and Canadian Classic (Alien Buddha Press). A new chapbook is forthcoming from Ethel Zine & Micro Press. He was shortlisted for the Rhonda Gail Williford Poetry Prize.