by Patrick Coy-Bjork ’23
This month, the editors at The Words are excited to showcase the work of Ben Zimet for Wordplay!
“Ben Zimet is a junior planning to double major in Math and English. They read their poems for an audience for the first time last summer, and they’re excited to continue to create and improve as a writer. Their favorite thing about writing is exploring sound, and trying to make language immediately evocative through sound.”
Enjoy two of their poems below!
Be Banished, My Self Doubt, and May Fiberglass Fill its Place
I sit Shiva for the sunrise
Until I can carve a facsimile from cardboard
Or find my guiding light
Under a cairn of cast out overgarments.
I sing my own praises in the shower
But every note is flat, dashed against
The rocks of mounting evidence,
Sprung forth like Athena
From the only meteorite I can hold in my hands.
The problem with dreaming,
With putting yourself in the glittering, squealing shoes
Of the ones who jump to the rafters
And shoot from the parking lot,
Is the punch that reminds you
Why they’re called the nosebleeds
Immolation at the Hands of a Rear Back and Wildfire
A miscast stone
scrapes heretic scalps
twice a day,
so statistically what’s the point of not
reaching back and firing
whatever you can grab,
whether that be
paving stones or prayers,
sharpened sticks or sympathy.
A punch starts from the shoulder
but a good throw
begins as an embrace,
arms reaching for contact
that a projectile’s innominate thud
can’t provide.
So if I’m going to spend the rest of forever
On this soul-bereft star stud,
I may as well saunter out of the streaming wreckage
Of a flashbang in a fireworks stand,
Pull my lips out of their insistent purse and
Bare my yellowing ursines
Up at everything that can’t hear the chatter
Of wind up dentures,
Or the agonized yawps of outgrowing illusion.