e-mail: jilliantrem@hotmail.com website: http://postmoderner.diaryland.com/ age: 22 school: University of New Hampshire Grad School major: Undergrad-English Grad-Secondary education (high school teaching) passions: classroom antics, sneakiness, 2 am conversations, gingham, perusing fine art, boating, light gambling, making revelry, swingsets, a cold irish red, muffins, secret agents, shakespeare, film, striped scarves, lexicology, paisley, appeasing the masses, playground noise, elvis vs. neil diamond, uninhibition, cumulous clouds, monologues, swimming with sharks, dinner parties, theme rooms, decadence, grandeur, strawberries, chocolate, screw cap wine. also published in: Aegis, Main Street Magazine, Tower other accomplishments: I don't read like a resume.

*Spoken word featured in "Harmony Conspiracy"*

Poetry

Breakfast Martinis on a Sunday Phil Collins Trattoria

Breakfast

He spreads the
butter we call haste
and eats his bowl of
corn bran in chunked
stomach-fulls.
Never tasting the
sweet of the fiber
of the grain of the
organically grown
who-knows-what
milked in the safety
of ceramic cupped
so lightly, ever so
lightly because he never
held onto a God-damned thing
for more than two-minutes.

And we called it morning,
but it was never morning,
just hello and move on,
and happy-hunting,
because that's the
way we're supposed call it,
when we've
just woken to the clink
of cheap tin alarms
banging at dual
nightstands in fury
as we smell the paste
of yesterday's bacon,
stuck, vulcanized to
the cast iron skillet left
haphazardly on the stove,
abandoned but there.

Martinis on a Sunday

Daily soundtracks infused
how I viewed my idiocy, 
while I ate watercress and 
tea biscuits watching
We never notice. I never notice.
the industrial breakdown.

It was sunset invitro-
losing my mind through
the world of leisure,
the view of golf course
To lean on that balcony. To perch. 
as we sip and nibble.

On patios, London called my
accent to be framed
within the debutante
persona inebriated 
We don't attempt. It's lifestyle. 
by mints and chit-chat.

We lost the heather morning
through waste-decadent grandeur,
the shroud of wind transporting
remnants of cracked leaves
To tickle the mossed statues. To scrape. 
beating us in their departure.

And I rocked in silence,
vain and shallow turning
full around away towards
the cold, the real, the now- 
I never felt before. I noticed. 
separated, but always that way.

Trattoria

If conversation waned with
tablecloths
your fingers would
trace tic-tac-toes on knees;
a canopy overhead to
disguise your mischief.

above
bread and olives
became centerpieces
dropped on 
linen rectangles
like softshoe.

you never lost eye-contact with the third party

a thumb 
in butter-spread
motions playing
red-rover on legs.

Phil Collins

I suppose if you are going to harbor
an intense hatred for something
it ought to be unicorns;
only they bring me back to sweatsuits
emblazoned with puff paint and ribbon.
Things I wore in '88.
Things I try to capture 
in a sad reminiscence.

And I still live my life to the hum of soft rock,
gripping in fists the audio stream
that eminates from car speakers
in rain soaked after-schools.
A song that leaks from clock radios at 9am

A metronome.

And I'm in dentist lobbies
Scanning piles of Highlights
For hidden pictures and morals
As Phil Collins seeps into skin
Tickling neck hairs in the waiting room

: You know I love you but I just can't take this.

And Dr. Ahern, Ahern, and Hershey
chisel and drill at a girl
who once told our gym teacher
to call her "Wildcat."

"Wildcat," there was a 
notation on his clipboard,
"you're up."

I admired his high white socks.

I don't think I hated the 
sound of the name
but the black windpants
Wildcat wore with her teal
highly detailed ocean/dolphin
coral reef scene tee-shirt.

I hated teal highly detailed ocean/dolphin 
coral reef scene tee-shirts like I hated white 
turtlenecks under crew-necked sweatshirts that screamed,
"My name is Heather and I like to ride horses."

I hate them like I hate soft rock at low volumes,
so low I can't see the layers to it; 
vocals faded into slow piercing
obligatory electric guitar solos;
ballads meant for volume,
so they can be shared 
by the masses: 
battle hymns.

And my ears hear it piped into Filene's
while I wait on starchy carpet
outside the dressing room,
staring at the metal toes of clothing racks
and play with the
bottoms of dresses

until glasses in eyes spy
the vinyl husband seat
and, to the tunes of Genesis,
move me into an
empty room.

The one with the beige slatted door.
The one with the whole where the latch should be.

And in the past I'm everywhere and waiting.
And waiting is watching 
soda creep up straws on first sips.
clocks that silence rooms.

Fingering the fabric
of an appliqué
on a unicorned sweatsuit
wondering
if I could 	feel
if I could 	touch
absorb
the idea

that one day I might be
something infinitely
interestingly more wonderful 
than
Phil Collins.