Sound Bites, Issue 4: McKenzie Bonar (she/her)

ABOUT OUR AUTHOR:

McKenzie Bonar is a Creative Writing and Secondary Education double major. Her poems were published in the campus literary magazine, Pendulum, and the online magazine, Trailer Park Quarterly. She shared her work at Pittsburgh’s poetry reading series “Oddmonth Poetry.” She is a senior at UPG.

McKenzie writes poems about bad jobs, family dynamics, life in her 20s, and the grief that comes with it all. She shares experiences from her own life which she hopes others can relate to, find peace in, or laugh at.

Poems by McKenzie Bonar

The Drive Home from Thanksgiving, 2009

My first death was in first grade

a classmate with leukemia.

The car was dark on the way home.

My Mom faced the road when she told me.

“Your friend is in heaven now.”

I couldn’t cry. I tried to.

I looked out the window in search of the moon,

praying she couldn’t see me from up there.

Philia

I paint my childhood best friend’s nails

light green to match her eyes.

I try to be gentle with the cuticles and skin

picked and shred from worry.

Her fingers get trapped in the knots in my hair

and the green paint smears through the black.

“We grow together,” she says.

 “I can’t say that about anyone else.”

In middle school, we’d compare photos.

Mark the changes from seventh to eighth grade.

“We are so

old,” we said then, we say now.

 I sip the pink moscato in my mug.

The proof of my pending adulthood.

She’s wearing my high-school t-shirt to sleep.

And she starts to tear up when she sees me cry.

“Tell me something you’ve never told anyone before.”

Aching

I fall asleep with my window open

like my grandma did when she stayed here.

She liked the way the sheets smelled

Rain-soaked, like her gardening gloves.

She doesn’t garden much anymore, she says her hands

and wrists ache too much to sew or fix

the embroidery on the blanket she made me.

The stitching is withered,

the “I Love You To The Moon and Back”

is missing every third letter

in my grandma’s favorite cliche.

When I was little, all I wanted

was to live like my grandma.

I wished my head fit her sun hats

or my fingers could thread the needle.

I shift the book in my hands,

I struggle to feel an ache in my wrists.

ABOUT OUR COLUMN:

Sound Bites is a poetry column intended to be read, heard, and tasted. It is finger food, messy and hands-on, compacting all the sweetest bits of a writer into a few small moments. The column will accept student writing submissions in the form of poetry or short prose for every issue from any and all majors, ages, and backgrounds.

Submissions can be emailed directly to Poetry Editor Geneva Webber at gwebberinsider@gmail.com. Parameters for submissions are as follows:

• Please attach a Word (.docx) document of your piece(s) with a maximum of 750 words
• Include a short but personal bio about yourself with a maximum of 200 words
• Specify your preferred name and pronouns
• If you submit multiple pieces, give them a group title of your choosing (i.e. “Three Poems by Lindsey Kutz”
• Be prepared for follow-up questions 🙂