I just read the poem “moles don’t think about space or small talk” by Savannah Brown. It is so good that I have to pause and think and taste the moment of thrill. I just don’t want to let it go. It is said that one is allowed to quote more than 25 words if one is writing a review. I know I am not good at writing reviews, but for the privilege of quoting the poem, I am going to make this a review.
I searched online and found a YouTube video and a school district webpage, which present this poem that was written eight years ago. Since then, I guess other women have learned from her and written in the similar veins. Still I wish there are more. No matter how many poems are written about this, there are always rooms for more, desire for another, appetite for a revisit of sentiment.
…seek that same masochistic thrill that
keep my human heart humming
human mind numbing
someone please help me, i think i’m becoming
insignificant again–
that’s the third time today
…
I was told I had an excellent imagination–
whoever would have guessed
i’d use it in the creation
of my own personal hell
where everything’s my fault
and no matter how small i get
i always take up too much space
It really makes me think about my own “masochistic thrill”, which just will not go away even if I have told my mind to “stop it” one thousand and one times. Actually the more I want to tell it to stop, the more masochistic and more thrilling it gets. It’s like a parrot that learns a bad phrase and cannot unlearn it. For the rest of its little life, the bad phrase will remain with it.
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Photo by Mayur Deshpande on Unsplash
Haoyan Do 