How to know your phlegm: text
the kettle, the firing, the burns.
Friday morning, I dig through
an overturned square. We find
purple felt after mistaking it
for a flattened plum. I’ve been
working, trying to exhume
all ideas of me being less
than an honorable lady just so I
can taste, spit old birds wide
in a world more true.
I barely know any
language but read a translation
on how & why we are
melancholic. I end up floating
on my tummy, forgetting hierarchical
emails, the closing statements.
What do I keep of this? If I
pardon compliments, all of them
would function brown. Never
blue-collared, never spooning lard into
cast iron. Flip a pan, dump
curled contents in dimpled cups
you don’t remember contain
ounces. Everything I make
can’t taste like me. When
the bile escapes, it directs your
body like a phantom into
the next room. The one without
Italian murals, the one which takes
your disastrous face between
its thighs. Me? I’m putting
care into sores without
knowing what I’m made
with. Don’t catch me
settling dust close. I’m too
scared of things holding
their speeches behind
their backs without
knowing how to cool
off. Put our rocks in
your pockets & walk away.
Click here to read Aaliyah Andersen on the origin of the poem.
Image by Jerry Huddleston on flickr.com, licensed under CC 2.0.
Aaliyah Andersen:
This poem reflects on our modern constructions of labor and productivity. Hustle culture, exploitative practices, unfair pay, harsh and dangerous working conditions, unpaid labor — all of which is frankly absurd despite its daily occurrences in American life. “Carrying Coal” started with some questions: Why do we conduct labor in this fashion? Where and how does it manifest in our lives? In what ways are we complicit in this system? In what ways do we fight back?
When it comes to my voice, I’m all about stream of consciousness. How can images, both pleasant and horrific, reflect on the individual and society? I’m constantly perplexed and disturbed by how American society forces the appearance of “clean” work while profiting on yet suppressing the “dirty.” In this poem, the act of carrying coal — in the literal sense and also riffing off the idea of getting coal as a present due to bad behavior — is a metaphoric vessel I used to critique this hierarchy of work.
Aaliyah Anderson (she/her) is a Black and Asian American student at the University of Mary Washington majoring in English: Creative Writing and American Studies. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Third Coast, The Madison Review, Brink, and elsewhere. Winner of the Poetry Society of America's 2024 Student Award, Aaliyah currently resides on Monacan and Patawomeck land and is obsessed with burnt cheese and intersectional storytelling.
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