Writing For the First Time Through Ally Sheedy's Yesterday I Saw The Sun

[Yesterday I Saw the
Sun]

But they were doing coke
and laughing at a joke
I've heard before and still don't understand

...

Really I've never noticed
how many wonderful flavors
of gum there are now

—from Tomorrow

Everywhere I look I see myself
and I am beautiful

—from Malibu

Props to Random.org

Methodology

My costume is so beautiful
is deceptive
yet I find I always cry
from the cold?

And no more hits and punches
and unprepared
thick and white with sunlight
and ignites forever the blood of
I feel it everywhere
Men look me over on every city street.

On Location

closing me in
and because I want to cry so much
sweet
of her lazy dusty dreams
and sighing in wait of
and the marrow of my bones
into veins of branched blood
That's how you speak.
I've found your movement.
I am enclosed.
with all our heartfelt plans.

ripped from my ice-casket tomb
I course now with pure crystal water
dodging, searching, I pursue
I only know I have no say anymore
green army pants brown T-shirt black sweater
and tell me what he is thinking.

stuffed into
or chew
Starving for two weeks

a small panic moving in her stomach
Walked into a waiting room filled with glowing girls.
Oh, how I hate you.

on a bet
alone with no parts
in every magazine
every day I am exhausted
I know a child who knows when she cries
Hey, Golden Child
begins to sing

I have sailed through the rapids of recognizable names
Where are you going
my heart lifts from the depths of my guts
an integration is taking place
dark wound in my heart
Did you find your father yet?

dance in the rain
and my table
sleep becoming tangled with the chanting
shining with true magic
you cannot dry me off
You could live in a warm and cozy
I've been running running running

when you were there
My edges blurring
with my thin gray veil of broken belief.

When am I going to get it?
remembering your face

New Jersey

to embrace me
with no regard for my blood

Other Half

to stop me from loving you
Can you believe I'm still at it?
calmer
ummmm—there's been a slight mistake, Miss...
I'm telling you—there's been a slight mistake
I have too much career at stake.
And will you get those fuckin rehab forms away from me—
I'm gonna get back and I'm gonna get through
to intervene
Whatever I take—
perfect sleep.
When I come back I am a little more dead.
my saving grace

I hate profound poems and
I have escaped the normal fate. You know.

waking up
about La Cienega Boulevard?

He couldn't remember to give me a hanger
with a sigh of resignation in another coffee shop
and ate celebratory goldfish crackers
The bird was by the side of my path
and wondered why I was still trying.
before I could grab it again.

for a split second
a portrait in a magazine
their envy I would come to owe
I've found a place among them.
Men are born already hunters
smelling dried flowers
Sleeping in my mother's bed
of the passage of time
I'm so sorry.
enshrouded in a deep blue haze
We are not in Mexico anymore.
It affords me no relief to know
hypnotic

to get a Diet Mountain Dew.

There is no prison like the one
he screamed.

I thought I heard them.
Do you know that smell?
There is no mistaking or escaping this.
To render weightless what I bear in what I've seen.
There was a Snoopy poster on the ceiling.
the abortion blues.

I am an algebra student.
This is the way out.

Superman.
I did it because I don't have a father for you
inside I nurse you still.

Inside is a little starfish lying on its back a
and an X on my bed
that had a bad memory
some guys I know.

and laughing at a joke
of gum there are now

The world was spinning
beautiful girl—wild saintly girl
I don't know what these occurrences


Methodology: This poem consists of one random line from each page of Ally Sheedy's Yesterday I Saw the Sun (Summit Books, New York, 1991) between pages 19 and 140, inclusive. Titles counted as line number 1; if there were too few lines on a given page, the random number was taken modulo the number of lines.


Eddie Kohler