ALEXIS GARCIA - POEMS

Alexis Garcia (she/her) is a queer Hispanic writer from New York, NY. She graduated from Manhattanville College in 2017, where she studied Creative Writing and Criminal Law. Since then, a few of her poems have been published in the anthologies UNITED: Volume RED and UNITED: Volume HONEY with Beautiful Minds Unite LLC and Upon Arrival: Threshold with Eber & Wein Publishing. Most recently, she has had more of her poems accepted for publication in Orange Blush Zine, Mixed Mag, along with other publications.

Playtime with Monsters
​​

​Who are we, if not
Monsters masquerading as
Put-together beings
Driven to disguise ourselves
In the hopes that we will eventually forget
What we may be
Animals altering the perception of the public
But maybe it’s time
We stop worrying as to whether or not
We’ll fall out of line
Try to be true to ourselves for a change
Arrange for a chance to put our
Innermost parts on display
Let our monsters come out to play
It might be good to 
Let them experience some shine
And if you decide to unleash yours first
I may just reveal mine.
 

Type of Woman
​

​First date jitters
A bouquet of the finest roses
Glasses of wine that will
Remove your instinctual need to remain cautious.
You don’t strike me as the type of woman
Who daydreams about 
Classic romantic gestures and
Wonders if someone will eventually
Find her to be worth all of that trouble.
Second date expectations
Conversations that attempt to 
Puncture the surface
Superficial tendencies temporarily 
Fade away as the possibility
Of a third date seems more likely
You don’t strike me as the type of woman
Who devotes all of their attention
To that one person
And worries about something going wrong
The peaks and valleys of dating
Do not interest you
Finding someone to help you feel grounded
Is neither a desire nor a goal of yours
And that is just something I will have to get used to.

Being
​

​We exist to dread the inevitability
That is meeting our untimely demise
I surmise that we all have the ability
To shed our former selves just a little each day
The way that time continues on with no regard
As to those being left behind in the dust
We must tread lightly
The days are long and heavy
Slightly, we pull apart
Only to return to the space where we last
Left remnants and particles
From an unrelenting heart.
Recklessly we intend to make sense
Of a senseless world 
Under false pretenses
The odds are meant to inhibit us from 
Prospering beyond boundless boundaries
In a state of being, there is nothing more to be
Than individual entities
Striving toward the nearest idea
Of bliss there is.
It’s hard to know for sure whether 
In the long run, any of us will be all right
We take flight to ascend over trends
Instead of pretending that we share the
Same struggles and the same thoughts
We have been taught to bask in our differences
Because they are what keeps us from falling
It’s time to stay alert and ready
Because our destiny is calling.
 

Fluent

​You are probably tired of being
Asked about your current emotional state
You contemplate giving the same 
Glum answer that you have countless times
But everyone knows that “I’m okay”
Never really means what it says
I won’t dig any deeper
And not because I don’t want to hear
What’s on your mind
What’s keeping you up at night
But because you must be tired of talking
Trying to explain why you are this way
To others, but mainly to yourself
I could offer my interpretation
I could offer my perspective
But what good will that really do?
You don’t need to say anything
We can just sit here in silence
Let there be just one night where
You don’t find yourself getting choked up
Over feelings you never intended to show anyone.
 

Learning to Laugh Again

​Depending on how much time has lapsed
After a period of immeasurable loss
It is difficult to pinpoint the exact moment
When you can allow yourself to laugh again
After a 24-hour grief binge
It seems as though you have exhausted
Every possible emotion
Every inkling to collapse into yourself
You temporarily affix a smile to your face
In the hopes that in due time
It will no longer feel forced.
The day then comes when you surrender yourself to
That first burst of laughter
Those brief seconds of being unable
To catch your breath
It’s the first time you’ve felt alive
Since the moment you were forced
To acknowledge the inevitability of
Succumbing to one’s own mortality.
Once the joyous feeling subsides,
You wonder if it’s still too soon
To feel anything but guilt
You are overcome with laughter again
And wait for it to return 
After another moment of indulging in self-pity
And constructing an emotional guard, you wonder if
Learning to Laugh Again should really be this hard.