Craft & Play Vol. 19

Two chronically online poets explain memes

Dear friends,

Who is that long-distance friend that you send all your memes and reels to? Who can handle the abundance of your boredom, and react to every single funny thing you send them? Both Julia and I are our family’s meme dealers. We are chronically online laugh-reacting at the reels we send each other on sleepless nights. 

This week we are celebrating, because our little publication has reached ONE HUNDRED followers. Of Trees & Poetry is our labor of love, and to see it grow, and reach people who share our love of poetry is such a blessing. We hope that those of you who receive this newsletter enjoy it as much as we do. Since Julia wrote a post on boredom, I (Emily) wanted to mind-dump all the memes stored in my little brain (and our Instagram chat) and start to live a more offline life. All things are lawful but not all things are helpful. I do not think memes are bad or wrong, I love a good laugh as much as the next person, however, in my next era, I want to have a more balanced media diet.

Forest interior with crooked wood by Mogens Ballin

For this week’s Craft & Play, we are celebrating this milestone with a one hundred line poem! 

If you know us, you know that we strongly believe anything can be an ingredient for a poem. We are writing a one-hundred-line poem to challenge ourselves and stretch our minds to write longer than we usually do. Normally, we like poems that fit a page. We very rarely write past one page. We want to change that by writing a one-hundred-line poem that took up three whole pages.

How we did ours— We took turns writing a bit here and there, responding to each other’s previous lines until we reached 100 lines. We drew inspiration from our chat, where we send funny memes and videos. We tried to make most lines contain a reference. 

For yours, you can reference memes, song lyrics, art— anything surrounding one particular interest you have. Ruminate on it, create a vault of lines you might use, and then start writing. 

Without further ado, here is our one-hundred-line poem. 

IYKYK

Salmon is short for salmonella, 
and one hundred other secrets 
are stored inside a locket that once
upon a time held photos of a loved one. 
Is there a metaphor in that? 
What about a map? The Red Book of Mao
who was inspired by Karl Marx. I received
a love letter along with the locket asking me to be
my lover’s comrade because roses are red and so 
is the State. But what if we are talking about 
the state of grace? Another song by Taylor Swift.
She describes our love lives to a T, because if we 
are not running through traffic lights through busy streets
are we really in love? Touch and go, I said no
and another meme pops up while I’m listening
to the radio. This time, it is Leonardo Di Caprio
pointing fingers at me. I laugh react and left it at that.
I have gone too many times around the sun
for any of this to be fresh and clean. The fox says
music is for the listener, the fox says music 
was meant for ears that can find beauty in a Walmart,
but every makeup tutorial I find says beauty is 
in the cash I carry, so I slump through life with only 
pennies, jingling like a chain. But every main character
feels she is unremarkable. The tropes follow me as I brush
my teeth, the mirror a question mark…maybe secretly I am 
a wizard, maybe a vampire will fall in love with me, maybe I 
was Cleopatra in a past life, and my hair will soon recall the luxury 
of Egypt. I was there 2500 years ago, 
weeping by the Nile before it was cool. 
Anyone who says otherwise is in denial. 
The other day, the sun angrily called me delusional 
and killed my remaining apples. Who wants to eat the mealy tasting
fruit, anyway? Brown and soft no longer fit for human consumption 
or even horses. Speaking
of horses, I finally understand what a K hole is according
to a YouTube short while scrolling. I am still old fashioned 
that I still scroll. This is how I roll. I might not look it 
but I am more ancient than Edward Cullen. At least I have more
rizz than an iPad baby glued to Cocomelon.
You know the drill, the oversaturated
colors that cling tightly to your toddler
like a colostomy bag, TikTok bred me. 
TikTok fed me rats in soup, rats fighting for their dinner,
so I toss my cores into the compost and wait for the Timelapse to turn them
into an orchard. I could eat the new red fruit, 
feed it to the rats that come out of the sewer at night. 
A pizza the size of the moon isn’t big enough for 
all the rats I’ve seen, their itchy claws ready to steal…
I don’t blame them. Nor do I blame the woman making
rat shaped dumplings and rat shaped cakes for giving
her audience a rat girl winter. 
They are impossible to get rid of once they enter through the rafters.
Crawling around the attic, it is a diagram of my brain,
that's why I don't fold my laundry. Clean clothes piles on my chair
and it looks like my grandfather's ghost at night. 
He shopped at Banana Republic before it was cool,
before Dave Chappelle sold his crackhead costume to them
for a million pennies. John Cena shopped there too, 
his special song playing when he entered the store, his money
doesn’t jingle, it folds neatly into his pockets, then 
decorates the counter so cool and minty green.
I stopped trying to be fashionable long ago. 
Now everyone knows I am a millennial though
I try to be all gen Z, yeeting all my skinny jeans. 
They might be somewhere in the backrooms where 
I middle part my hair, wear mom jeans for a few years. 
Lo, and behold, now low rise jeans are back, so is layering tank tops.
Crocs and uggs. Even Paris Hilton has to tell me 
how much I slay and she loves me. Because everyone 
is a little ADHD according to online tests and buzzfeed quizzes.
Am I going to get cancelled for knowing which Hogwarts House 
I belong to? That is uncool now, apparently. so please, 
send me back those skinny jeans and give me back my side part.
I don’t feel like trying anymore.
But try is exactly what I’ll do, because when you don’t care if you’re cool…
you don’t have to worry if your poetry is cringe,
or if that last verse you put into the world “ate.”
You can be very mindful, very demure. You can pet 
your sweet pug and drink cold tea and scribble
words down before your children spill their cereal
all over the hardwood floor. 
I found five grammatical errors already this morning.
Take that, Grammarly. AI might have made my omelette
recipe, but everything is poetry, just not the ones 
made by machine. It’s too much too compete with
the ones already here… now they’re inventing new ways
to make me feel obsolete. 
Like a demon possessed toaster that hisses 
smokes and screams, much like an episode of Stranger Things.
We had a good run angry reacting at corn for no reason, so I will
catch a chicken with a leaf, for a man blinded  is useless
according to the Chinese, then I will pour pumpkin spice marshmallow 
over my rotisserie chicken for my rage bait content, just to get more clicks to prove
I am still relevant. Or I will cry alone in a Walmart parking lot,
remembering the days long before YouTube, I was burning CDs
and using a pay phone. Back when cameras were separated from phones
much like sea from dry land. I want to go back to that time 
when the question of the day was what color is the dress? Blue and black, or
white and gold? Did you hear yanny or laurel? Are you team Edward or team Jacob?

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Thank you so much for being here. We are grateful for every person who is a part of our community, and we hope our work here has blessed you in the ways it has blessed us.