Porcelain Throne is now poemma!

& a case for the poetry of everyday life

Hello dear Porcelainians,

You may have noticed an uptick in poetry-adjacent content. Funny! I too noticed this. And it led to a bit of a rebrand…

I give you poemma, poet laureate of my mother’s fridge. I’m here to excavate the poetry from everyday life. Not an assignment, a riddle, an IQ test. Just a place to take your shoes off.

Non-poetry people give it 5 stars!

Well, I only surveyed one and she birthed me, so I will disclose a potential bias. But let me make a case for why you’ll love it here, even if the word “poetry” spikes your cortisol levels.

Listing my brother on eBay

Since I was a wee little lamb, poetry and humor have been twin flames dancing around in my head (but not in the Netflix cult documentary way).

In third grade when the teacher asked us to write a poem, I brought her “Selling Him,” an imaginary tell-all about listing my brother for sale on eBay. It began:

I wore his clothes
I took his room
he’s mad at me
oh I assume

if he came back
to such a mess
I’d try again
but sell for less

He and I are close now.

Over the years as I traded Shel Silverstein for William Wordsworth, poetry and humor stretched out like twin rivers. I began to hold poetry with a certain reverence that I didn’t think humor was due.

I assumed poetry had be unreachable to be good. Obscure. Academic. A labyrinth with one exit. I had to take a perfectly pedestrian idea and then distort it until it was unrecognizable.

“Poetry is too obscure for me.”

I almost abandoned poetry completely. It felt too obscure. Too academics-going-head-noddy. Was I the only one not getting it?

Then I realized I had it all wrong. Poetry—like humor—is an act of play. In fact, it’s quite possibly the greatest act of play: playing with the building blocks of language itself.

It’s about digging your fingers into the murk of an idea too difficult to articulate—an idea that, in its full glory, seems to exist beyond the limits of language.

You pull your hands out to find a few phrases sticking to them. So you string them together, but there are holes. There are always holes. That’s what lets the readers see through to themselves on the other side of you.

Hol(e)y sh*t

And so poetry became an exercise in leaving the right holes. In blurring the heron so it might be someone's crane, or their stork, or the egret named "Edith" who walks the pond behind their grandmother's home.

It isn’t about obstructing things to make meaning unreachable, but to make it more reachable. To say, “That feeling you can’t put into words? Yep, I’ve felt it too.”

Jaywalking across language

It was around this time that I met my dear friend Jessie Lian, a genius designer of poetry jungle gyms. Her poems were like spiral staircases of curiosity that took you by the hand and walked you up! and up! and up! with her.

Together, we started PEZESTRIANS, a poetry group comprised of a few local pedestrians, just looking for the zest in everyday life.

Every week, we met to jaywalk across language. We once spent twenty minutes debating the difference between a stick and a log, resulting in the diagram below:

And over time, I found my way back to the voice I’d abandoned—the one where humor and poetry could coexist. The twin rivers met again.

So why are we here?

Existentially, unsure. But in terms of this Substack, I can tell you.

To stick our fingers in the muck and unearth poetry from everyday things. The poetics of Dolly Parton, the poetics of Planet Fitness signage, et al.

And along the way, we’ll collect little language nuggets. Killer song lines that go unnoticed. The worst Delta Airlines napkin to ever exist. (Okay, many of you saw that already.)

We’re reclaiming poetry as the language of being human. Of having a heart that feels things and a mind that thinks things. All seven point something billion of us, just trying to put the unsayable into words.

Farewell to the Porcelain Throne

So with that, I formally abdicate the throne of Porcelainia. It’s been a pleasure flushing with you. Now, I shall humbly assume my new title as bully of the poetry playground. And BY GOD if you don’t wait your turn for swings!!

🐱
emma