High School


In the future,

when I am an adult,

I will imagine myself reliving high school.

But this time,

I'm the cool girl.

And I hate all my friends.

They are so bossy.

Always trying to get me to do what they want.

When I only care about what I want.

I don't succumb to peer pressure.

I smoke because I want to

and it makes me look ultra-cool

(and it doesn’t make me want to throw up).

I listen to loud music

and stay out late.

And I'm looking for a bad boy

to piss off my parents.

He has to be beautiful

and sullen

and confused

so that I can come into his life

and save him.

If you know him, call him

and tell him the cool girl is looking for him.



She wants to make out.

The Center of the Universe (Yep, That Would Be Me)

by Anita Liberty

Simon Pulse •  June, 2008

All material copyright © 2011 fair anger productions, inc.

no stealing yo

Advice from Anita Liberty


        When you write a poem about your most intimate yearnings, remember not to carry it around with you and then get distracted by the idea of making nachos for yourself and then eat those nachos (note: quality of salsa = quality of nachos) and then go watch television and fall asleep in a melted cheese-induced stupor and wake up to see your parents standing there staring at you and realize that they’re holding the poem about your most intimate yearnings because you left it on the kitchen counter. If this happens, you’re going to have to endure a lecture about the evils of smoking (like I don’t know) and about how being cool isn’t really all that important and now you have to denounce your own poem about your most intimate yearnings as a joke. And that will hurt.

You Make Me


You make me want to walk on a cliché beach with you,

    kiss you in front of the proverbial sunset,

    whisper sweet nothings in your ear,

    hold your hand and have all kinds of mawkish feelings

    well up inside me.


You make me want to sacrifice my originality for you,

    give up my inimitability,

    abandon my desire for unconventionality,

    close the door on my eccentricities.


I know I should be stronger than my feelings for you.

But you make me into the kind of girl who just wants to

    be the kind of girl who follows you around and waits for

    you after the concert and who feels better about herself

    just because she knows that you want to kiss her.

The Family Dog


my father teases him.

My mother protects him.

My sister tries to discipline him.

And I write poems about him.

The family dog.


Rescued from a kennel

only to find himself

caught in a Sisyphaen-type hell.

He's eager to please,

but we all want different things.


my father wants him to be rowdy.

My mother wants him to be gentle.

My sister wants him to be obedient.

And I want him to understand.

The family dog.


Unable to understand,

he is immobilized by

the variety of our expectations.

He can’t tell us what he wants.

He can’t express his feelings.

He can’t write poetry.

He’s just a dog.


But my father wants him to love him best.

My mother wants him to love everyone.

My sister wants him to sit and stay.

And I want him to get out while he can.

The family dog.