2019 Q4 FEATURED POET: JOANNA COLLINS

My physical world feels crushingly small sometimes. I rise and shine for 6 a.m. Zumba; I work until I’m bleary eyed from email whack-a-mole; I walk aimlessly around Target; I fall asleep, alone, in my one-bedroom apartment. Insulation and isolation are the stuff of brain rot.  It’s like eating Pop Tarts every day for breakfast; it’s comfortable and sweet but will eventually hollow out your bones.  Unfortunately, my bill collectors don’t care much about wide open spaces, and so I continue to subsist on this daily diet of corn syrup and strawberry flavoring.

I could go days without encountering a poem in wild. But, then, every night I open a portal to another universe. That portal is Poetry Twitter. A stranger will post the poem of a different stranger. A poem so strange that it replaces every nutrient leeched from my body over the course of my quiet, unrelating routine. In 280 characters or less, a fellow poet’s optimism will wash over my timeline with a turquoise glimmer of hope. It’s like a shimmering mirage to a thirsty traveler. We share frustrations over rejections and writer’s block (How many times can I vacuum my apartment before the words arrive? What if I never write another a poem again and…never mind, I got one!). Ideas fuel ideas. A beautiful online soul – someone I will never meet in the flesh – bequeathed me the words “Poem Bones”, and I was off and running to the graveyard of my mind. My small world bursts open in a flood of confetti and verse.

I hear people say that Twitter is a cesspool of cancel culture and hot takes; Facebook is a corporate machine (that also owns Instagram), and Instagram is the embodiment of our worst narcissistic tendencies.
Perhaps there’s some truth to this.

Yet, let like all tools, humans decide to use them for evil or good. Poetry Twitter is the light side of this free will. Before the internet became a three-headed monster, it was allegedly intended to connect people and resources through online community. I cling to the belief that at least one head of this monster is still on the side of good.

The only downside is that Real News creeps in sometimes and reminds me that Twitter is not just for poetry. Luckily my brain immediately turns “Impeachment trial trending” into “Do I dare eat a peach, fellow Poets?”.

COLLINS’S POEM ‘KING FOR A DAY’

CAN BE FOUND ON P.22 OF THE QUARTERLY.

FULL TEXT OF THE POEM & POET BIO BELOW.

KING FOR A DAY

I bought a castle
And filled it with birds
Just to see what they would do

Maybe I’ll return to a garland of feathers
Draped around a dusty chandelier
Or maybe I’ll see memories of flight
Splattered down a winding staircase

If you ask kings to build your home
They’ll build it on a hill
And look the other way
When you slip into the sea

They’ll leave a bible in the nightstand
But rip out the final pages
And keep the answers for themselves

They’ll fill castles with birds
Just to see what they’ll do

Joanna Collins

Joanna is a Nashville poet who moonlights as a government lawyer.  She enjoys writing about the absurd, such as politics and love, and would describe her writing inspiration as “Sylvia Plath, but if she also did vaudeville”. She is a frequent flyer at Nashville poetry open mics, with Poetry in the Brew holding a special place in her dreamy poet heart. She has written a romantic haiku for each of our presidents (many of whom would not have deserved her!).  One day she will finish her Supreme Court musical.

Joanna was in 2020 The Vagina Monologues at Exit/In (@vagina_warriors), benefiting Thistle Farms.  She is a lifetime member of Janet Duke’s Z Team Nashville, with Zumba stylings featured at: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjT-cH3fqU2a8O53rsgzV1Q. 

Joanna graduated from the University of Notre Dame with a Bachelor of Arts in psychology and American studies. She received her Juris Doctorate degree from Vanderbilt University Law School.