Caption: (I didn’t say how many centuries ago I built it.)

I think I’m almost over this inconvenient little cold that hijacked my week. I always get the crankiest right before I get better, and right now? I’m irritable. So here I am—me and Billy Joel again—trying to outwrite it.

Unexpected upside of this quarantine-of-one? Writing time. I can’t stop writing poems. Apparently, I’ve written enough to call it a collection. Which is both hilarious and humbling because I didn’t plan this. I just kept writing and suddenly, a pile of poems.

Tentative title: Look, I Built a Cathedral. That’s where I’m putting all these strange, overly sincere fragments I’ve been calling poems and hoping they aren’t just the remnants of fever dreams pretending to have meaning. (Pretentious and perhaps premature to give it a title, maybe, but I need something to organize me when I write. And I was shocked to see there were common threads in most of them after all, maybe even in one called “Stephen King at Midnight.” I kinda wanna try to get that one to him. Is that silly?)

Looks like I’m on a bit of a streak writing about famous men. Another poem’s called “No, Rob Lowe Is Definitely Funny”—and yes, it is exactly what it sounds like. So yeah. Something’s going on. Maybe this whole cathedral is just a fan letter in disguise.

When you get to the feminist BS calling out in some of the poems, you’ll know better. (Not that any of that is aimed at Rob. I’m not a monster and I love his podcast. And spoiler, but he has a great sense of humor.)

I’m used to interrogating sentences for logic and structure, not for assonance and consonance. But I did have an Arts Appreciation professor in college who wouldn’t let us leave class until we could clap a certain meter. I forget which one—it wasn’t iambic, that’s too easy. I was among the first rhythm-captives to be released.

His class was brutal. One night I stayed up cramming, parked illegally in front of a fire hydrant in a panic, and somehow pulled off the only A on the midterm. Color me shocked. I was homeschooling my son, taking a full class load, working part-time. I thought I’d failed.

When he handed the exam back, he just said, “Very good.” I needed that. And I’ve been able to spot a Jacques-Louis David from across the room ever since. That red, am I right?

Anyway.

One of the poems in this accidental collection is called Paging Father John Misty. I thought I was just asking him to bless my weird little cathedral—he is a “Father,” after all. One (very early) reader thought I was propositioning the good man. Which—no.

To clarify: I am not bat-signaling Josh Tillman for a booty call in that poem. Did see him live once. It was 2018, on a September lawn in Indianapolis. Weather: perfect. Setlist: divine. I ran up front periodically to take photos. And now, obviously, I have no idea where they are.

And I claim all rights to Bat-Signaled Booty Call™

Still. That little misreading got me thinking.

What happens when someone misreads a poem? Or at least not the way I meant? Am I allowed to say, “Hey, that’s not what I was trying to say”? Because, let’s be honest—how do I know my subconscious wasn’t off doing something sneaky behind my back?

You may or may not know about Barthes’ famous essay, The Death of the Author (don’t panic, we’re not going full academia here). The gist: once a text exists, it’s out of the author’s hands. Readers can interpret it however they want. I usually use it as an excuse to say: “Sure. Whatever you think. I said what I said – take it away.”

But when it actually happened to me? Authorial intent may be considered dead by some. But at this point, I’d argue for a little authorial consent before you go deciding what I mean. Or don’t, I don’t know. I’m still figuring this out. I just have to take a deep breath and remind myself to trust the reader. Or?
Oof. Authorial Consent. That might need to be a poem.

(Is there a switch for this impulse, by the way? Poet friends, don’t leave me hanging. I don’t want it to go away—but I would like to do other things occasionally. It’s like I bought a new KitchenAid attachment and lost the manual, and now the meat grinder is making mince of the bones and it just won’t stop.)

All this to say, I’m all about a good double entendre (girl, please), but what about when I’m not trying to slide into Josh Tillman’s DMs, and a reader decides my subconscious is?

First of all: how dare you?
Second: how did my subconscious get my passwords again? Hey. We’ve talked about this. No personal devices after two drinks.

Here’s a little poem for those of you ever tempted to get thumbsy at 2 am:

Well, Someone Hit Send

I regret the drunk text

less than the thing

it kept me from doing.

No reply.

It was still

a kind

of rescue.

So if the author is “dead” (poor authors; did you mean to off us?), does that mean the reader is next?
👿 All’s fair, you know. (Kidding. Unless you’re not?)

P.S. I also wrote a poem called Authorial Intent Brown Ale. It’s for the writing residency crowd—and only for those who don’t take their work too seriously. Or do. For now, it’s going into my cathedral, as strange and drunk as both it and the cathedral are.