Things That Were Thrown Out Of My Room
Empty red bottles reading “Fluoxetine” on them,
spent asthma inhalers, a sponge with a John Lennon
quote about a sponge written on it, letters written
in crayon adorned with foil stars, concert stubs from
every show I saw between the ages of eighteen
and twenty-five, a green barrette that was given
to me by a girl with purple hair, a single tarnished
earring, a demo tape of a band I had seen once
who played a song about a girl I was cheating with,
a deck of playing cards that I bought on a train,
a Lego biplane I bought for someone else but never
gave them, dried flowers I was given when I was
too sick to move but not sick enough to forget,
more empty red bottles once housing clonazepam,
a poster of ’68 Comeback Special Elvis swiveling
and sneering at a poster of an alien head made up
of thousands of smaller pictures of astronauts
walking on the moon, a picture of a blonde with a halo
drawn around her head next to one with devil horns
and a curling tail drawn on, a butterfly knife I bought
from a friend before I realized it was illegal, yet I
still carried it around on a camping trip even though
I don’t know what I planned to do with it, a cookbook
with only recipes involving chili peppers, a perfectly
fine baseball that was thrown out by accident, the bear
that had sat in my closet for years wearing a red ribbon
even though it could have just as easily been given
away, a pillowcase featuring all the original Star Wars
characters that I wanted to keep no matter how many
holes and stains it may have had, and all of this saying
nothing about my hope for a prolonged childhood as well.
| John Findura |
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levelheaded: Things That Were Thrown Out Of My Room
This week’s poem by John Findura is just what its title says it is, a list of “Things That Were Thrown Out Of [the speaker’s] Room.” Image after image of physical objects add up to create the speaker’s identity—or rather, the speaker’s former identity. The philosophical crux of the poem lies in wrestling with this distinction, accepting the way that the past influences the present, even if one tries to separate him or her self from the what came before.
Just as interesting is the way this poem makes us consider how people react to learning, piece by piece, about someone else. What do we think of someone when she confides in us that she was once on “‘Fluoxetine’”? How about if, soon after, she tells us she had also been on “clonazepam.” How do we stereotype Elvis fans, or alien fans, or astronaut fans?
The speaker’s editorializing the objects he once owned adds a deeper psychological complexity to the poem. Learning that he had a butterfly knife that he carried “on a camping trip even though / [he] don’t know what [he] planned to do with it,” shows that the speaker still has an attachment to these things that got junked. As he considers what his possessions say about him, we reflect not only on the objects, but on his self-perceived connection to them in formulating our own opinion of him as a person.
In the above example, the fact that the knife was never used says a lot about our speaker. How drastically our perception of him would have changed if he stabbed a person, or if he gutted a fish. In this way, the speaker’s personhood is just as much made up of the things not listed. The poem makes us consider the choices not made, what could have become of the baseball if it wasn’t “thrown out by accident,” or if the stuffed bear had indeed “been given / away” instead of trashed. It makes us consider how there are things people cherish until they no longer cherish them. It reminds us of how quick life can be, and how saying “nothing” can say many things.
– The Editors
