GENIUS: The Oregon Trail is the Oregon Trail by Gregory Sherl

You know how you plan on having just a little bit of dessert, like one cookie or a small slice of cheesecake, but then when you taste it your tongue and your brain are like oooh that's so good I need some more right now and then you eat up eating the whole cake? 

My experience with Gregory Sherl's The Oregon Trail is the Oregon Trail was exactly that (save for the stomach ache--when I was done devouring his book I actually wanted even more...) I was going to read a few poems before bed the other night, but once I started I couldn't stop, and swallowed it all in one sitting, despite my heavy eyelids. 

Just put out by the amazing Mudluscious Press, Sherl's collection of poems, "loosely or not so loosely based on the iconic computer game," has turned my heart inside out.  

Reading the poems feels almost like dreaming, but it also feels too real for that. Or it feels like dreaming and then waking suddenly, because as much as these poems are playful and sensual, they're equally, or even more so, devastating:

"Let's make out on a bench. Let's make out & then/ talk about making out. It was good, right? The way I held/ your hair like poison ivy? I am your yellow bird./ Walk me home. I am lonelier than a rusted wrench."

And:

"I want to write a sad poem but I'm not sad. 

I am less than sad. Negative sad. I am looped

television laughter."

But it's not all sad, and probably one of the best opening lines I've ever read is this:

"I want to walk in on you having sex with me."

Ha! Brilliant. 

So I could say that the poems tell of a family's journey out West, but that would be achingly reductive. Aching--that's what this book is about. About love, and lust. Want. Death. Loneliness. This book is about the ways in which we fumble through life, through the darkness of ourselves and each other, searching for a light, for someone or thing to love, to last:

"I want to buy a mailbox/ with you. I want to hold an umbrella over your umbrella,/ keep you warm while I make your hair wet with my mouth."

And:

"When you die, I will scream into the side

of your face. When you die, I will scream

like I sniffed too much glue. Like if I eat

your hair, I might live forever."

And:

"I could, I know now, live forever if I was quiet enough,

but I need to scream you back into me. I need to smile

with my mouth open, my chin dripping from your thighs."

And (sorry, I can't stop myself!):

"I am my mother's son, meaning I am me & my 

mother pushed me out going O fuck hurry.

You did the same with our children--gripped

the bedpost. On the trail we always ford the river, 

always hold our children when they have a cold.

Child #2, Wendy, wants a new brother who won't die. 

Isn't it weird how much world there is?"

There is so much world in these poems, so much weird world I am aching for...

Gregory Sherl is officially one of my all-time favorite poets. Everyone should read this book. Over and over again. Yes, it's that good! Buy it here.