I tried brewing a placebo/antidote in the garage over bottomless beers and drifting solitude,
while you read the first chapter of every self-help book from the library.
It’s hard to take the ropes off your wrists when my hands are twisted too and
we can’t find any knives — we put them all up high when our son was born,
like some sort of protective order against ourselves.
In years since, the library rescinded your card and you’ve refused a diagnosis.
It’s growing roses or building a barbed wire fence, depending on whatever.
Have you noticed the market sells the flowers in any color now? That
happiness isn’t a phone reminder? I think anger/angst are etymologically linked?
Harnessing Hypomania
KG Newman
What is the significance of this work to you?
"Waiting Out Bombogenesis" is about taking the long road out of the snowstorm in your life — and preparing for the next one... "Harnessing Hypomania" is a (perhaps fruitless) quest to help your loved one, even as you need help too... and "Flawed Superhero" looks at an unsure dad who needs his son and a comic book character to remind him of his strength.
What is the significance of the form you chose for this work?
In these three lyrical pieces, the prose form allowed me to expand the different scenes throughout each poem, allowing them more time to breathe, come fully alive and intertwine into the other (often contrasting) tableaus in the poem.
What was your process for creating this work?
"Waiting Out Bombogenesis" was written straight though, in one sitting and about an hour, while reflecting and looking out the window at an actual bombogenesis in Denver, Colorado, in April 2019... "Harnessing Hypomania" came together with the end stanza first, and I wrote backwards from there... "Flawed Superhero" was written the morning after watching a Spider Man movie with my son. I took him to preschool, drove to work with my mind still churning and then the poem spit itself onto my notebook.
KG Newman is a sportswriter who covers the Broncos and Rockies for The Denver Post. His first three collections of poems are available on Amazon. The Arizona State University alum is on Twitter @KyleNewmanDP and more info and writing can be found at kgnewman.com. He lives in Hidden Village, Colorado, with his wife and two kids.