Karisma Price
In school I was always told that I needed to split up the run-on sentences I’d write in my essays, and that “rule” carried over into my poetry writing. The first draft of “You’re Always so Serious” was very short. I wrote it in response to people telling me I had a mean resting face and that I always looked so serious (which is my right).
Terrance Hayes read the poem and told me it felt like I was stopping myself from saying all that I wanted to say and that I should lean into the instinct of writing those long, run-on sentences “just like the wrap around porch” in the poem. He was right. I did have more to say. I often think about real estate and living conditions, especially as someone who grew up poor.
St. Charles Ave boasts beautiful houses. Tourists go to see them and take photos, but that area and Audubon Park used to be a sugar plantation, and many of those houses have antebellum style architecture that make me uncomfortable because of the violent history of slavery. I wanted the poem to feel like an anxiety-induced dream, unconfined to real-world logic.
The final draft is a result of leaning into my natural inclination to not stop a sentence even when I should. I ended up writing multiple poems with the title “I’m Always so Serious,” the title of my collection, to meditate on other moments in my life where I felt seriousness was needed, as being from New Orleans, Katrina and its aftermath play a big role in my writing.
< DRAFT 1 >
You’re Always So Serious
which is to say in the winters I dream
of owning a mansion in New Orleans—specifically
one on St. Charles Ave—with a wrap around
porch and white pillars that would’ve
only before seen the likes of me
if I were a maid or the mailman
trusted enough to know the code
to enter the gate and leave the mail
on the peeling rocking chair. See, this
started as a memory of me smelling
magnolias for the first time in the sixth grade:
the sun makes me fatigued enough to not care
that a hurricane made half my city
no longer a city. I have no
more comparisons left to give.
This poem was supposed to
be about flowers and how my allergies only
allow me to love a few. When I think
of a rocking chair, I think of blood. It rocks like a heart-
beat running from whatever is inside that mansion,
or behind it with a whip.
< final version >
You’re Always So Serious
which is to say in the winters I dream
of owning a multifloored mansion
in New Orleans. Specifically, one
on St. Charles Ave. with a wraparound
porch and white pillars that would only
see the likes of me if I were
the maid, the midwife, the family
mechanic, Archie Manning,
the maintenance worker,
or the mailman trusted
enough to know the gate’s nine
digit passcode and leave
the mail resting on the family’s
rain-weathered mahogany
rocking chair. In this particular
dream, I’m the mailman. The marigolds’
red tongues lick the legs
of the chair as I leave
the mail on one of its non-refurbished,
lead-painted arms. Their green
necks rapidly invade the eggshell
painted porch like any poor
soldier in need
of his salt. I rip one
from the ground for the sake
of killing, look it in its yellow
center, a vibrant blister,
before I rub it between
my knuckles and render it
a freshly ground thing.
Looking back, this poem
was only supposed to
be about my sinuses,
how, even in my dreams,
I sneeze at the sight
of untended weeds, flowers
whose mouths unfold
under the brazen light
of the sun. The nightmare
is supposed to be my
allergies, how they only allow
me to love what blooms
from a distance, but in every
dream those vibrant marigolds
keep growing. Their vines
are needle-thin
tumors that keep stretching
crazily onto the porch,
keep making the rocking chair
nervous at its own home.
When I see that rocking chair,
I see blood. It rocks like a heart-
beat running from whatever
is inside that mansion,
or behind it with a whip.