I need you to be
flames now please

remind me the devil is
an alien is a robot is david

I need you to float into space then die
not die then float into space

no we don’t deserve
another chance

I should be sad

maybe there’s some place to start
over out there but full of ghosts

they move in clusters
it’s a goddamn miracle

the way they want
to live inside you

they take us into their chests
and hold us there

dad we ask why can’t we
I see any planets from here

Robin Lee Jordan is a writer, zine-maker, collage-based visual artist, teacher, and event organizer. As an artist, she has an interest in genre-expansiveness and multimodal, collaborative creation. As a teacher and organizer, she enjoys facilitating interactive, horizontal learning & arts experiences. Robin makes lots of zines. She wrote a libretto about artist Hilma Af Klint through a series of collaborative artmaking rituals. She wrote the chapbooks Morning Blessing Poems (Foundlings Press) and THEY ATE EACH OTHER UP (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs). Robin is an organizer for Buffalo’s ZineFest and, for 10 years, she ran a free creative writing program for teens in Buffalo, NY. This poem appears in her 2021 chapbook THEY ATE EACH OTHER UP.

Related Events

• On Wednesday, June 11 at 6 p.m., poet and artist Robin Lee Jordan will be giving a reading, followed by a workshop guided with a writing prompt at Art’s Café in the Springville Center for the Arts, 5 East Main Street, Springville, New York 14141. Robin will explore a range of poetics from tradition, to collaborative, to visual. This will lead to participants collaborating in a poetic “ritual.”

• On Friday, June 13 at 7 p.m., she will join poets Matthew Klane and Sage Enderton in an event featuring 3 artists working at the intersection of poetry + collage/zines + and music, with special guests Adam Drury & Jesse Miller of the band Managerial at Fitz Books and Waffles, 1462 Main St. in Buffalo.

• Robin’s two-part THEN + NOW: ZINE MAKING FOR FUTURES, a soothsaying workshop for zine-makers, continues on Saturday, June 21 from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Western New York Book Arts Center, 468 Washington St., Buffalo. For more information, visit wnybookarts.org.

The Poem of the Week feature is curated by literary legacy awardee R.D. Pohl.