back pocket poems
SELF PORTRAITS + PERSONALIZED POEMS
Bronte lovingly captures the intimate and messy of the everyday through her poetry. She founded her personalized poetry company, Back Pocket Poems, in 2020 to capture the magic and essence of those who cross her path. She’s been commissioned to write for loved ones of all flavors. Here are some of her words.
Friendship bracelet
Friendship bracelet bonded, blood oath bandits.
Behind the sixth grade playground,
pricking pinkie promises- mixing sweat and sugar and secrets.
Treehouse sleepovers now hold court in bar bathrooms
Late night highway confessional, wind harmonizing with our wild
Inky sky splattered with stars, a wish on each one we see
A promise to never grow up, but to grow together
honey home architect
Honey home architect
Each room wallpapered with her love, embroidered with her patience
A touch tree, a healer
Reminding her starlings that everything good is:
slow, sweet, simmering.
Joy cartographer, with fingers that played sonatas and tied shoes
Earth mother, planting seeds of light in the darkest gardens
My Father Didn’t Leave a Will That Summer
So my mother left her diamond on the porch
I watched her crawl, belly deep, into the cool and damp
Under his cabin by the lake
Seaweed and Spanish moss, her widow’s veil
To search for the treasure map—Pirate King that he was Building me ships in the leftover whiskey bottles
Now he’s paper mache in a treasure chest
Blue-green veins chart his latitude
As the weathered hands that made pills ebb and flow pull silver coins from behind unexpected ears
Leaving gifts on every neighbor’s doorstep
Believing that gold should flow to whomever was thirsty
The voice that rose and crashed across kitchen counters
Thundered from a faceless sea during every recital
When his eyes blurred in a pharmaceutical haze
I knew they were dimmed lighthouses that could guide him home
He followed a flurry of sirens into the deep and the dark
Through the waters and around a new finger
We came home to a silent house
that then swelled and filled with my mother’s shriek
Dropping to her knees as he lifted up his anchor
They told me he was gone on a sweat soaked August day
His tide going out to sea before I could say goodbye
He named his boat Mama Tried
And Dad
I know you did
So I’ll leave you this message in a bottle
And when the ocean of you floods my senses,
I hope I have enough buckets to catch you and keep you safe
Her name means thunder
Her name means thunder.
Lightning bottled behind emerald eyes.
Her rain falling in dust scented bookstores, between velvet jazz licks,
at empty arenas freckled with stars, when watching the sea.
Always partial to melancholy candy,
she painted their bedroom an ocean.
Remembering salt pairs best with the sweetness of morning light.
She could never built an Ikea dresser, but my god-
could she build you a sentence.
A mixologist, wrapping you in notes and flavors so tender.
Lovingly capturing the intimate and the messy-
A cocktail you didn’t know you needed.
And she could never not burn a baked good,
But it’s because her fingers itch and burn to scribble something.
To sing some remembered melody, curling its phrases like smoke.
She collects glasses and records and never throws away a card.
She wants to know everyone’s first kiss stories.
And when she lost four limbs on a family tree in one year-
And when she thought that flowers might be more lovely looking up at them-
She dug her way out.
Have you ever seen a hurt girl heal so many?
Have you ever watched her watch the moon?
Before I met you
Before I met you, I knew your name.
Watched how it curled around wistful tongues and fingers.
Its speaker unable to contain your champagne bubbles-
they spill and stain your sugar on my best tee shirt.
Already wrapped around me, your vowels dripping on my
bare feet like pancake batter.
Our future sleepy Saturdays.
So when I first saw you, there was an ache in my sweet tooth.
A catch-breath in Washington Square.
A thousand surprise parties waiting for the exhale of your familiar.
A snow globe settling its glitter,
everything soft. And still. And you.
Silhouettes sync in a cardboard apartment.
On sidewalks and beaches and grocery stores-
the produce aisle mister tearing up at our duet.
My forever dance partner
My parade of lucky pennies.