Remember when you were on the verge of adulthood and all you wanted was to get a job and an apartment and start your life? Remember when you finally got there and were hit with the surprising realization that youth is actually fleeting, and adulthood is a VERY long journey full of responsibility and repetition? Poet Hunter Hazelton does. In his poem Another Freaking Monday he beautifully captures the space between adolescence and adulthood.
Hunter Hazelton:
This piece is a few years old. I had written it once I had moved back to Phoenix from Flagstaff, and I had started my teaching career during the pandemic. Even though everything was entirely online, I was living with my parents, so I would drive in to work and I was one of the only teachers meandering around the campus. I had this routine; I’d make my coffee or go buy a coffee, and then I’d drive in, get situated, start printing out all my plans for myself and listen to NPR until class started. And as I was doing these things and getting into this sort of routine, it occurred to me that I had spent so long dreaming and planning of arriving here that I just sort of realized that looking forward, this was going to be my life, that this was it! And I kind of started to feel a little of that existential crisis coming in; being a new young adult and getting into the work field. So, just reckoning with that mundanity and missing how exciting youth was…that’s sort of where this poem came from.
Another Freaking Monday
I say to the pot of god
I pour in the morning. Just enough time
to rinse clean. I work my seven-to-three
scanning weeks into a copy machine.
I’ll spend the next ten years
Reaping mistakes I made at nineteen.
I miss my days with my lover. When fresh starts
meant picnics. Fire.
Remember the empty apartment? Before home became hourglass
kicked on its side? When did I start joking about weather?
I miss fearing
monsters under my bed. Now I worry
about traffic, if I’ll ever hold a baby,
the gas in my car & NPR, silver hair, the shirts I wear,
another load.
I forgot dinner—again. I takeout. Give them a name, an address.
The fortune reads: Every day is a special occasion.
Tonight, I’ll pull up a chair for horizon
And call it a special occasion.
Forever is boring.
I can’t believe I ever wanted it.
About the poet:
Hunter Hazelton is a poet and educator born and raised in Arizona. He began writing at the age of six and is a former Poetry Out Loud state champion and graduate of Northern Arizona University. Hazelton’s work has appeared in Scribendi Magazine and Shine: Best Teen Writing of Arizona. His debut poetry collection I Never Understood Religion Until I Learned Your Name was published this year.
About the host:
Steven Law is the co-producer of KNAU’s series PoetrySnaps! He is a poet, essayist, storyteller, and the author of Polished, a collection of poems about exploring the Colorado Plateau by foot and by raft.
About the music:
Original music by Flagstaff-based band Pilcrowe.
PoetrySnaps! airs the first and third Friday of each month.
