Small Poems

Once again, posting this super late because I just procrastinate a lot.
This week I thought I would share some poetry and some thoughts on a particular type of poetry. So, a while ago I read this poetry collection commentated by Lemony Snicket and he said something along the lines of, "I've read a lot of poems that are too long, but none that are too short." In my poetry seminar last year, my poetry teacher often had us do an exercise where we would eliminate all but the most essential lines of the poem. And there's a publication at my school called "The Cliffhanger" exclusively for short, unfinished pieces of writing.
Basically, what I'm saying is that short poems can be a lot more powerful than long ones, both for the reader and for the writer.
Writing small poems can be pretty therapeutic sometimes. While it's sometimes good to write a long-winded poem and lose yourself in all the words, you can get to feeling like you're constructing a big long art piece rather than just getting some words out. Which can be good, but if you're trying to relax or get some thoughts out, sometimes it's best to just write little poems. If I get struck with tiny bits of imagery or emotion, I can scrawl a few sentences and not feel like I have to make a whole long poem out of it. Or if I have a bunch of unattached feelings, I can do several poems instead of feeling like I have to link them together somehow.
So, I decided to share some of my small poems that I've written recently, and possibly some I've written in the past if I can't find enough from the past few months.

1
When the hunger that is not hunger comes,
I want to pull at the black sky
until it uncoils as a rope.

Then the stars would be all alone
and the rest of space
would be swallowed and swirling
inside me.

2
To butcher your poem,
drain it
'til it's a bag of bon words.
Then skin it
and bury the skeleton
in papery ice.

Then wait
for spring.

3
Dry as chalk,
when I talk
the words go up the wrong pipes
the ears choke on them.

Syllables coil on the mouth
as a snake skin.
Better to keep quiet,
keep the fear in.

4
A strange kind of winter 
this is-
made of water
rather than ice.
I haven't yet
seen anything die.

 5
As stirring
and shaking 
as a silent orchestra
desperate to play
even a verse

Is how the spring is,
shivering in the wings,
dancing in her head
beneath the earth.

6
Siphoned the last drops
of what you were
right out of the last holding cells.

And they left
one letter. 

(Here's some from before the last few months, some of which I've already published here)

7
soft incense, thunder
        brushing my hair

elephant curls itself
         into the starry darkness

8
Sync-o-pa-ted
Early whistle of rain
            Drops
and I am exhausted
            ah god
            violet, exhausted 

9
I look on trees naively,
as though they are my friends,
who cannot speak as I do
with lungs and mouth.

And yet at least
for my imagined mind
they sing-

I'll never know whether
their music is real
or merely
an imagined thing.

10
I almost saw them through the trees-
the ghosts of things I'd lost.
But then they disappeared again
to that place that I forgot.

11
I can pick your voice
out of the stairwell,
like a thread unraveling from a tapestry.
To a well-practiced ear,
even to an ill-practiced ear,
it sounds like the main voice
of the chorus.
I ignore it.

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I hope you enjoyed those poems! The first six I all wrote this semester- the last five I wrote either last semester, over the summer, or in high school.
If you have any small poems of your own, feel free to share in the comments! Or even write one of your own just for fun.
Thanks for reading,
-Ariel