Old Poem: I Feel like an Elizabeth (the first)

This is probably my most successful poem -- if not across all my poems, certainly the ones I wrote by 22.  Unfortunately, I can't recall if I wrote this while at university or the summer immediately after I graduated (when I had a bit of a creative burst).  I probably wrote it afterwards, since I suspect it would have turned up in one of the college anthologies (like Still Life with Fruit) had it been finished at that time.

I read this once at the NewArk Writer's Collective readings (back when they were still meeting at Cafe Genesis not too far from the Rutgers-Newark campus -- that was certainly my favorite incarnation of the group -- it just didn't feel the same after the cafe closed and they started meeting in West Orange, I think it was).  One of the main figures in the collective wondered where I had pulled this from.  I suppose it is a combination of deep longings and (sexual) frustrations that I had faced essentially all through college and a bit of literary embezzlement from the epics of frustrated men and especially women throughout history.

It was published in Gyst #6 (1993).  I believe this DC-based zine is defunct.  I picked up a couple extra copies for my parents, and then later I learned (after her death) that my mom had bought 10 or so!  Maybe she gave them out to her friends.

I Feel Like an Elizabeth (the first)

Times like these
I push my head deeper into the pillow
Hope that tomorrow will be less treacherous
That which must be done 
           will be done
That which may not be
           will not be
And I squeeze my body tight 
so that it will not give it all away 
Ignore desire
Press down until even my dreams 
have been driven away
and I wake with bruises
I, resigned, proceed through the routine 
Meet all with smiles, with a false heart 
Still waiting for that final release. 


The poem is pretty straight-forward.  There are two places I intentionally play with line-breaks.  "The first" can wrap around and connect with "Times like these."  It is also possible to put a short or a long break between "false heart" and "still waiting," since it can be the speaker or just his/her heart waiting for release.  Obviously, the distinction is very minor, and the capitalization tends to favor the longer break.  I think this was one of those poems that are more or less "given" to poets in a state of high creativity (and you often don't know exactly where they come from, but you never look a gift horse in the mouth!).  The first draft isn't much different from the final version.  It is probable that the poem was a bit of a shout-out to Elisabeth W., a young woman in my English honors program that I had a minor crush on in my junior year.