FEATURED POET: KAYLA VOLPE

Kayla Volpe is a twenty-something spoken word artist originally from Middletown, New York. As a young poet, Volpe attended and competed in the Woman of the World Poetry Slam in Austin, Texas in 2014, as well as the National Poetry Slam in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 2013. Her first self-published chapbook, "Establishing Sovereignty" was released in February, 2014 and included a collection of bildungsroman-esque poetry. She studies Creative Writing as an undergraduate at Binghamton University and currently performs for audiences locally, and regionally.

Untitled Poem About Running Out of Natural Resources

You are a giver. You are a giving tree. You are arms outstretched bearing gifts. Sweet gifts. You are going to give something because you don’t know keep. Or hold. Or wait until her actual birthday because you just can’t wait, but you always wait too long to bloom...

To learn how not to give a fuck.

You want to give so your wants are unearthed. But blind, greedy hands pluck at you Your feet are soiled sadness wishing to grow downwards. And you are hoping with limbs tied, clinging to your roots.

So now, with your sore, outstretched arms you will find new people to give to. And you will bring them beer. You love beer. You will tell them that beer is for sharing, but everything you have to share has been bottled inside you. Fermenting. And you will not sip. You will not speak. You can’t let everything out.

Beer will be there to console you so you will want to give it all away. By the buckets. By the barrels of empty friendships. You are still in the process of digestion.

You will bring them coffee. You love coffee. You will gulp it down to feel the bitterness eat your stomach lining. You will use this to present yourself as human. Human with pain.

You will supplement it for food. You will supplement it for sleep. You will share it with people so they don't realize you don’t eat.

You will bring them food. You used to love food. The gesture will distract them from your growling stomach. But you will swallow down that roar. That screaming inside you. You will bring food to other people because you cannot feed yourself. You cannot keep it down. And the screaming is so loud, but you cannot keep it down.

You’ve expended your limbs with no fruit left to bare. You think of other people when you can't bare to think of yourself.

You will bring her silence. And coffee. You both love coffee.

Two cups will sit on the cold porch railing, letting off steam And you will watch them in envy.

You will have nothing else to give.

I like the label smoker/You can smell me burning

I have (too many) untitled thoughts because I have trouble with labels.

I have trouble; it hides behind the titles I don’t give to [things].

Admittedly, I say, I am a smoker. I’ve heard It’s a trendy way to kill yourself.

slowly, choking on smoke rings, inhaling and holding, I only have the lungs to hold things

that disappear when I let them go.

I cannot name this burning. I wouldn’t use my tongue to describe to you the taste of dying.

But I know you can smell it, the decay in my clouded breath, the fire in my tarred chest.

When you find my scent in the wind I hope you will name it. Name it after my ashes.

Shards

I have a collection of people who have been broken by other people.

They collect their shards in cardboard boxes.

The artistic ones make jewelry out of their collected pieces. They decoupage the box and display it as a centerpiece on a table set for houseguests. They make music from shaking their boxes like maracas.

The smart ones compartmentalize, sorting the pieces in order of value. They figure out what can be saved. They figure out what to hide away in a box under a half-dusty mattress.

The smartistic ones are the most hapless. Or hopeless. They display the most valuable pieces to themselves in the mirror. Glass looking at glass to see clearer. Shards sharpening image.

But my collection, it grows each time I visit a bar or a poetry reading or a music show.

The collected and I, we tip our tongues toward each other, serpents searching for sameness.

Finding broken people for my collection has become easier the harder I look for resigned eyes and nervous fingers and bold jewelry.

My collection has a collective conscious, we all want to breadcrumb our pieces into a path back to the one who left us broken beer bottle bodies.

We want them to make us back into art. We want them to care enough to make us back into art.

We want to make sure we are saved, (at least in boxes) and stored under their beds. To make sure we sound like tambourines, crediting our creators while they sleep.

These people that I collect, they loved once; with all of their glass bodies. They were once handled with care. They were once cradled and called “Baby” by the only person who will ever be allowed to call them “Baby.”