Welcome to Poetically Yours. Poetically Yours showcases poems by northern Illinois poets. This week features Janelle O’Malley.
O’Malley is an interdisciplinary artist working primarily in sculpture, painting and fiber. She works in nonprofit art education. Currently, she is completing a dual master’s degree in art education and 3D studio art at Northern Illinois University. O’Malley is also the visual arts coordinator for the Atrocious Poets, a Woodstock poetry group.
O’Malley has been writing since high school. Her work focuses on shared memory and identity formation. It has been shown across the U.S. and was recently featured at the Wright Art Museum and Side Street Studio Arts. Today she’s sharing two short poems “Life Coded" and "I’m Not Made for You.”
Life Coded
What do you make of this thing life
Are we just stardust coated skeletons dancing through space
Hurtling through darkness, we cannot see
Moving faster to an ultimate end
A simple biological code
Did you think there would be more
Are all of these moments coded
allusion of celestial bodies taking up space
Something we chase to a dead end
Nothing more than a material substance, basic matter
Spending life needing to take up space
Failure to see in fear of its end
There was nothing to decode
The journey was all that really mattered
I’m Not Made for You
I’m not made for you
cut from a perfect piece of pine
Not the timber you long for
to build your towering stack of twigs
I didn’t emerge from the earth for the pleasure of you
to just cut me down
Sprawling waves of uneven growth
billowing from soil to sun
You cannot tame these timbers of waving grain
even with the most delicate of saws
You will get lost in the forest of me
I am not made for you
- Yvonne Boose is a current corps member for Report for America, an initiative of the GroundTruth Project. It's a national service program that places talented journalists in local newsrooms like WNIJ. You can learn more about Report for America at wnij.org.
