Martha Strom’s poems have appeared in New Letters, Passager, Common Ground Review, and Straylight Literary Arts Magazine, among other journals. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
The Disease Speaks
The cute guy working at the Blue Stove
Put me to sleep today.
I walked out without ordering a latte.
I drew two pictures– black pen and ink
Drawings: so what? Boring.
Even David Foster Wallace was writing a book
About boredom when he suddenly got
The brilliant idea of killing himself.
I am writing this poem in an attempt
To relieve the tedium and boredom of life.
I am no self-realizing youth, bent on
Actualizing myself. I have done everything
I ever wanted to do– except for what I can’t afford.
This spring, the pink and white and yellow
Watercolored flowers put me to sleep.
Even Poets House and the books of poems there,
Even 12th Street, even food bores me.
Sorry about this poem– I know it’s boring–
My disease wrote it.
I think I want to die.
To view more from this author pick up a copy of the Spring/Summer 2018 issue of The Stray Branch.