Last best brawler, body balloon.

Unsettle with my fists.

Pulpy brat, portable carnage.

Could have been a cog so much greater

than eighteen-odd years of body–

Exploding whale on the British shore.

Lice in a bald man’s hair.

The last wolverine.

Some better machine. Less hysteric.

Boys come to smell me out:

they don’t care for particulars.

I am colorless

in my little red wrapper!

let me in, my little Valhalla.

I am the smallest of valkyries;

you are faintly grateful

but more for Cézanne.

There is no need to be kind to me:

I will be gone in thirteen days.

Clear and blue your lantern;

sleep the long way home.

Sy Puchner-Noel is a College first-year. She calls herself a “poet with a lowercase ‘p’” — as in she loves writing poetry, but can hardly presume to call herself a capital-P Poet who writes poetry and sits around smoking cigars in public parks looking cool, mysterious, and Camusian. She drinks copious amounts of tea with her friends, reads far too much, and tries to be an eighteen-year-old girl, toe the manic-pixie line, and write lowercase-p poetry.