Flyover States: A Poem

[Listen to an audio version of this blog here.]

I took a few different writing workshops in college, and the culmination of each workshop was assembling a short chapbook of poems. Each time I did this, I saw new patterns emerge, from poetry that examined my eating disorder, explored ideas of family, or investigated romantic relationships. Each short collection tells a story, and in a deeper way, gives me a bit of a looking glass into my mental and emotional state at a given point in time. I self-published a book of poetry in 2020, and ever since, I’ve been slowly but surely collecting a new set of poems that will be ready for the world whenever they’re good and ready. You can’t rush things like this.

Many of my newer poems are grounded in two things; nature (the sky, rain, thunderstorms, the sunrise, the ocean, etc), and home. They are softer and less angry than things I’ve written before. They are less emotionally charged and follow a more detailed narrative.

Home is a big topic, and the life I live now in Orange County, is very different than what my life was growing up. The divide between rural and urban America is something that people talk about when say, an election comes around, but I’ve lived both lives, seen and felt the pros and cons of each. I couldn’t wait to leave my small hometown and explore whatever else the world had to offer. And now…