Quite Excellent

My Therapist Says Make Friends with Your Monsters
José Olivarez

we are gathered in truce
because my therapist said
it was time to stop running, 

& i pay my therapist too much
to be wrong, so i am here.
my monsters look almost human

in the sterile office light.
my monsters say they want
to be friends. i remember

when we first met, me & my
monsters. i remember the moment
i planted each one. each time

i tried to shed a piece of myself,
it grew into a monster. take this one
with the collar of belly fat

the monster called Chubby, Husky, 
Gordito. i climbed out of that skin
as fast as i could, only to see some spirit

give it legs. i ran & it never stopped
chasing me. each new humiliation
coming to life & following after me.

after me, a long procession of sad
monsters. each monster hungry
to drag me back, to return me

to the dirt i came from. ashes
to ashes, fat boy to fat.
my monsters crowd around me,

my therapist says i can’t
make the monsters disappear
no matter how much i pay her.

all she can do is bring them
into the room, so i can get
to know them, so i can learn

their names, so i can see
clearly their toothless mouths,
their empty hands, their pleading eyes.

Ars Poetica
BY José Olivarez

Migration is derived from the word “migrate,” which is a verb defined by Merriam-Webster as “to move from one country, place, or locality to another.” Plot twist: migration never ends. My parents moved from Jalisco, México to Chicago in 1987. They were dislocated from México by capitalism, and they arrived in Chicago just in time to be dislocated by capitalism. Question: is migration possible if there is no “other” land to arrive in. My work: to imagine. My family started migrating in 1987 and they never stopped. I was born mid-migration. I’ve made my home in that motion. Let me try again: I tried to become American, but America is toxic. I tried to become Mexican, but México is toxic. My work: to do more than reproduce the toxic stories I inherited and learned. In other words: just because it is art doesn’t mean it is inherently nonviolent. My work: to write poems that make my people feel safe, seen, or otherwise loved. My work: to make my enemies feel afraid, angry, or otherwise ignored. My people: my people. My enemies: capitalism. Susan Sontag: “victims are interested in the representation of their own sufferings.” Remix: survivors are interested in the representation of their own survival. My work: survival. Question: Why poems? Answer:

My Therapist Says Make Friends with Your Monsters
José Olivarez

we are gathered in truce
because my therapist said
it was time to stop running, 

& i pay my therapist too much
to be wrong, so i am here.
my monsters look almost human

in the sterile office light.
my monsters say they want
to be friends. i remember

when we first met, me & my
monsters. i remember the moment
i planted each one. each time

i tried to shed a piece of myself,
it grew into a monster. take this one
with the collar of belly fat

the monster called Chubby, Husky, 
Gordito. i climbed out of that skin
as fast as i could, only to see some spirit

give it legs. i ran & it never stopped
chasing me. each new humiliation
coming to life & following after me.

after me, a long procession of sad
monsters. each monster hungry
to drag me back, to return me

to the dirt i came from. ashes
to ashes, fat boy to fat.
my monsters crowd around me,

my therapist says i can’t
make the monsters disappear
no matter how much i pay her.

all she can do is bring them
into the room, so i can get
to know them, so i can learn

their names, so i can see
clearly their toothless mouths,
their empty hands, their pleading eyes.

Ars Poetica
BY José Olivarez

Migration is derived from the word “migrate,” which is a verb defined by Merriam-Webster as “to move from one country, place, or locality to another.” Plot twist: migration never ends. My parents moved from Jalisco, México to Chicago in 1987. They were dislocated from México by capitalism, and they arrived in Chicago just in time to be dislocated by capitalism. Question: is migration possible if there is no “other” land to arrive in. My work: to imagine. My family started migrating in 1987 and they never stopped. I was born mid-migration. I’ve made my home in that motion. Let me try again: I tried to become American, but America is toxic. I tried to become Mexican, but México is toxic. My work: to do more than reproduce the toxic stories I inherited and learned. In other words: just because it is art doesn’t mean it is inherently nonviolent. My work: to write poems that make my people feel safe, seen, or otherwise loved. My work: to make my enemies feel afraid, angry, or otherwise ignored. My people: my people. My enemies: capitalism. Susan Sontag: “victims are interested in the representation of their own sufferings.” Remix: survivors are interested in the representation of their own survival. My work: survival. Question: Why poems? Answer:

The Facebook Sonnet
By Sherman Alexie

Welcome to the endless high-school
Reunion. Welcome to past friends
And lovers, however kind or cruel.
Let’s undervalue and unmend

The present. Why can’t we pretend
Every stage of life is the same?
Let’s exhume, resume, and extend
Childhood. Let’s all play the games

That occupy the young. Let fame
And shame intertwine. Let one’s search
For God become public domain.
Let church.com become our church.

Let’s sign up, sign in, and confess
Here at the altar of loneliness.

01:32 - Michael DuBon reads his poem, “In the Wash”

03:30 - Extended conversation with Michael on student analysis

17:28 - Michael answers student questions

“Instructions on Not Giving Up”
Ada Limón

More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out
of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s
almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving
their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate
sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees
that really gets to me. When all the shock of white
and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave
the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,
the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return
to the strange idea of continuous living despite
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,
I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf
unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.

Michael DuBon
“In the Wash”

Arms deep, filth-clad, toilet toil: working at The Ski Tahoe Resort.
Scrubbing this mess of spiders, disposing the cast off suppositories.
the tracks of geriatric indulgence.

Work, where people don’t know how to talk to you.
Where the other housekeepers won’t trade Spanish with you
because you’re not Latino enough, too American. Where one day
you hear a voice from behind exclaim,

No clean!
and you turn around to a white man waving his arms, pleading,
No! No clean! We don’t need no clean.

Where you can’t speak Spanish, can’t speak English,
where all you can say is, Ok.

 Work: where you throw up on the carpet after two turkey sandwiches,
so hungover you pass out again before vacuuming them up
then see them again in the sink, the toilet too,
you scrub up your mess alongside everyone else’s.

Where your fingers fall endlessly but never pick out
all the dirt. Your Guatemalan parents who got you this job
scold you for your failings as it might mean their jobs,
their names already sullied.

The job helps pay your parents’ rent first, then your own. They made you work
at so young an age, a childhood stained across carpets of empty suites.

You blamed them for wasting wasteful time
earmarked for young weekends. Proved them right. Smoked in the units.

Eight years drain like hard water.

My hands reappear from rubber gloves. I enter any room here and I’m already gone.