My name is Chanel Marie McKinnon. I'm 19 years old and am a Creative Writing major at York University. I write poetry and prose, as well as perform spoken word. I'm particularly a fan of playing with structure. I will follow any artist back.
Place Poem
We found a little corner of sky in a parking garage,
sitting by itself like a left behind sock
or the threads of my dignity
(we still remember you).
I skipped to the curve of pavement it looked down upon,
slowly spun on one foot in the snow that the sky had let go of.
Careful,
there was an uninhabited flow of dopamine in my head.
I looked up to avoid your eye
and saw the universe instead.
Between stars and neurons, we’re an infinite loop,
little pieces creating a whole.
And a little corner of sky in a parking garage,
like white blood cells in a cancerous clusterfuck,
remains our salvation.
I finally let my eyes settle on yours,
silently dared you to laugh.
You didn’t.
You put your arms around me in a shy request for me to return to Earth,
and you kissed me as if i wasn’t crazy.
You kissed me as if it wasn’t -10
(Celsius),
as if at 1 in the morning we had all the time in the world.
And a little corner of sky in a parking garage,
freedom’s embraced by walls.
We held hands and walked away,
neither person leading.
I was busy storing memories away in ice trays in my mind
when you looked at me and said:
“that was fun”.
And a little corner of sky in a parking garage,
existing on its own accord,
refuses to be tarnished with ceilings.
Post with 2 notes
Sometimes you’re just old skin,
peeling off in petals,
and you sit by yourself just to watch it happen.
Making love or fucking,
hydrating yourself with another person’s ecstasy.
Do you still feel empty, little girl?
Because I sure do,
and I can’t bring myself to use a lover as a weapon
when “lover” isn’t a misnomer
and “a” is “my”.
I saw you
asleep,
slack jaw and displaced curls,
and I knew I would have loved you years ago.
Post with 1 note
July
You destroy cities like follicles of hair
and summer rain fills my days with humidity and migraines.
You’re the storm that never came,
the falling stock in the sky:
a false economy.
Darling,
I want you to play hide and seek between my thighs.
I’m secrets buried deep in a wall.
Limerence.
Limerick.
Azurette.
Tiny.
I’ll swallow your intentions so they can live in my stomach,
swim around in tiny circles, making tiny tidal waves.
Your polluted mind’s like smog-filled skies,
making rain smell like paradise.
Detox, and float down a lazy river.
Won’t you get high off neurotransmitters
and grow without secondary photosynthesis?
Stealing wishes in the night is just a thank you for building me a makeshift castle.
I’ll hand you the chloroform and have you make love to dreams.
Just because we’re miles apart
doesn’t mean we’ve never brushed hearts.
And I’m in love with an alcohol-spun room
and terrified of your drugged mind.
Call me Mrs. Caulfield,
I’m your Sally and you’re my Jane.
Two lifetimes in twenty-four inches,
memories held at bay like 65 degrees.
Your words are predictable and your chastity expected.
No, this isn’t a marriage based on morality.
We exchanged passwords to be kept on chains around our necks
but never used.
Your selfishness keeps July 2nd, 2006 away.
(Like me, are you afraid of flowers?
Their yellow dust knows July,
fertility staring me in the eye.
If I get too close,
I can hear the words,
“you’re just like us,
all you are is yellow dust”)
But I can’t keep the middle east from you.
Your prisoners of war are stripped and gagged
so they can’t whisper the truth at night.
Parasitic—
I’m only saved by your falling through the cracks
Post with 4 notes
I could’ve settled down in Paris
But the man who came for me
Took me by the hand
and said it was time to leave.
Margaret Atwood, she could not stop me,
Virginia Woolf, she could not stop me,
The truth is I wanted to go,
He was all I know, he was all I know.
I like to sit between the words,
being the spaces that remain unsaid.
I’m so comfortable with silence that I would undress in front of it.
With the lights on.
And sometimes I feel like I’m cheating on myself when I try to tell people how I feel,
but my insides long to be kissed just the same as my skin,
so I choke on the words,
waiting for some psychological Heimlich maneuver.
And there you are.
You take a seat in the silence,
smile at me and hold my hand.
You wait.
I wait for the words to close in,
to tie me down and chase you away.
And still, you wait.
Maybe,
if I can hate you before you leave
it won’t hurt so much.
I can write you off on my taxes
next to my T-4s and W-2s.
The words tumble out.
I can’t help but fall in love with every one of your flaws,
enchanted by what I’ve tried to hate,
basking in the concept of you negating my crazy
and staying.
He told me that he couldn’t live without me
And I told him the same thing, too.
And though we knew it wasn’t true,
we both knew it wasn’t a lie.
A light was coming in through the window,
it was a most familiar type of light.
How I loved every street light
and I wanted him to kiss me.
Post with 1 note
(my failed attempt at a) Villanelle
I prefer to make love to a wall.
It never shirks away;
I know I’m not pretty at all.
I hear voices echoing down the hall,
I hide my head under the blankets.
I prefer to make love to a wall.
My cell phone receives a promiscuous call.
A gentleman caller who’s not so gentle;
I know I’m not pretty at all.
I open the door and pull on my shawl.
Cold rain tries to caress my face but
I prefer to make love to a wall.
I go to buy a pack of Pall Mall.
Avoiding the gaze of the cashier,
I know I’m not pretty at all.
Maybe I’ll be a Saul turned Paul,
reaching holy redemption, but
I prefer to make love to a wall
I know I’m not pretty at all.
Post with 1 note
Sonnet with Any Established Rhyme Scheme
Shall I compare thee to your mother in bed?
Is that too bold a statement to make?
I only repeat the sentiment for your sake,
hoping it haunts and resonates in your head.
Or would it hurt worse if I said it was your father?
I wouldn’t be lying either way,
It’s a small price for me to pay
to get you all in a bother.
Or is it worse to say I never loved you at all?
I never cared about your aspirations
or the way you shivered with sensations
when I made you fall?
You may think me nothing more than a snitch,
but you have to know that you’re just a bitch.
Post with 2 notes
I’ll smile when you’re unhappy
because you shouldn’t have to deal with my anxiety, too.
If you’re going to hurt, hurt fully;
disregard my feelings so I can take care of you.
And maybe,
your endearing ambitions and tribulations will distract me from the burs in my skin.
And maybe I’ll turn to you and say “do you ever hate yourself?”
Let me love you the most then.
I can’t stomach love myself so let me give you my ration.
I’ll kiss you when you think you least deserve it because my words don’t leave footprints on your pillow,
but my lipstick stains in “pay attention to me or rip me apart” red.
I’ll ignore my crumbling walls to fix all the lights in your city,
because let’s be honest, I’d rather not see my failing architecture,
And your lights shine so pretty.
Barter for sympathy now,
little boy with your finger on the trigger of the bottle.
Do you expect me to stop you?
Couldn’t even if I wanted to,
you never understood the word “no”.
Oh, and it’ll be the death of you, my dear.
I want to be selfish—
that is where the trouble always begins.
Somewhere,
churning butter in the back of the garden,
it still exists.
Oh,
trust me,
I’ve tried
(and try)
to burn this garden down.
I’ve told the gardener that it would be easier this way,
to erase and just start over,
but he’s weirdly attached to the overgrowth.
I tried leaving,
for a time.
I shared concrete beds and stainless steel embraces,
drowned out the sound of crickets whispering to each other
with the pulling of hair and the pangs of teeth.
I’d hold onto a branch and pull down,
stripping the twig,
stealing all the leaves for myself.
But somewhere in the back of that garden,
I stay.
And when flowers are executed in order to decorate townhouses…
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