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Title:       Inner
Date:        2026-04-22
Link:        https://spool-five.com/poetry/2026_apr22_inner/
Word Count:  247
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> Jaswinder Bolina’s poem “Mood Ring” imagines the speaker as both
> himself and an interior being (who happens to take the form of a small
> donkey). It’s quite silly . . . and not silly at the same time. A sort
> of “serious fun.” Today, we’d like to challenge you to write your own
> poem in which the speaker is in dialogue with him or herself.

As a side note, this was the first time I'd heard of Jaswinder Bolina,
and what a poet he is! Highly recommend checking out his poetry if you
haven't already.


Won't you travel through time
with me? I already know all that.
The tabby cat, we left behind
when I was five, and she was in
her old age and too scared to go.

I know about the all the after-school
sandwiches gobbled quickly
before television time.

I know all about the hazy nights, when
it felt like other dimensions had descended
upon the city, like the hellmouth in Buffy.

No, further back than that, past Wolfe Tone
And Caesar, and the time when trees were tall
all the way back, when you were just a cell

That was the time I was trying to get at
When time was not for me, but something abstract
When being had not yet come to know itself as being
The time that pushed me up, out of the sea
And lies waiting to pull me down into the earth