I was nowhere near the internet when 2014 finally went away so maybe I missed the irritating best-of list surge? Or maybe 2014 was so bad there were fewer lists? That can’t be true, it’s probably just my feed. (I confess there are some lists I rely on, and was glad to see The Top 40 According to Virgil Maro and Said the Gramaphone’s 100 songs, which comprises most of what I listen to every year, last year’s songs.)   I thought someone should do the worst of 2014 just, you know, generally, rather than by genre but I guess there is already an internet.   Here is my first take at drawing 2014 by emoji:     I don’t know why I clicked on the acorn for that drawing. The page of possible emojis was taking a long time to load.   But maybe it is the right emoji.   So many other terrible years preceded 2014 and made the worst of it possible; years like 1769 when Franciscan missionaries first arrived in California. All the death and stolen land that followed. Acorns were a staple food for the Ohlone people.   If I were to close my eyes, open the internet and point to a place where some of the terrible and beautiful parts of 2014 reside in a tangled wave, a seismic wave, my finger would almost certainly land on Cassandra Gillig’s Introduction to the New Order of St. Agatha. One good thing about 2015 I feel confident about: forthcoming posts further describing the New Order’s sacraments, along with habits and ways of the Agathites.   At the Poetry Center’s reading for Anne Boyer last month, everyone read poems by Anne and some also read poems for Anne or written with Anne in mind and it was remarkable in a way that’s hard to describe, to hear so many poems by Anne in the voices of friends and maybe this is a form of The Reading poets should undertake more regularly? When travel budgets run low? When air travel is over? Somehow it all worked out and nobody read the same poem although that would have been fine too and part of the pleasure was waiting to hear who chose which poem. Jasper Bernes read Revolt of the Peasant Girls (hear Anne read it here) a clear antecedent or fellow traveller on the road to the New Order.   Lauren Levin and Juliana Spahr read some of my favorites: “How a Revolution” from My Common Heart and what resembles a grave but isn’t.     I chose 2008’s “Difficult Ways to Publish Poetry” from ART IS WAR. I also wrote a poem for the event, indebted I hope to Anne’s imaginative capability, a quality so present in her work, of imagining if not another world, the worlds possible within this one, alongside it, imagining a beautiful destruction of the worlds we live through, worlds descended from 1769, from 1587.   The poem I wrote is minor but maybe a beginning, by which I mean it arose from the situation of seeing myself in a photograph and--I am sorry to write this out loud again--worry complaining to a friend that my arms “looked fat.” I thought I would try writing a poem with more imaginative capability in relation to this situation of seeing my body in a photograph. It’s a pantoum, a form I feel sort of conflicted about and have never written in before.   I post it here in the spirit of the new year, in place of resolution, in honor instead of the New Order’s first sacrament: a full reclamation of one’s body & its power.   written under the sign of and for anne boyer cassandra gillig & king tender, with beatriz preciado hiromi ito alice notley monique wittig rosa luxemburg, with thanks to the list of 20 things you absolutely cannot wear over the age of 30, louis-ferdinand celine, and the british board of film censors   my arms in that photo, two slabs of meat just an image but it has potential to defile itself to grow older   just an image but it has potential I could crush the men to grow older between the slabs   I could crush the men between me and you between the slabs my head is making my shoulders look huge   between me and you deep and wide my head is making my shoulders look huge oh let me cross over   deep and wide flex and heave oh let me cross over wearing scrunchies and platform flip flops   flex and heave with the given supplies scrunchies and platform flip flops that is my father’s uterus   the given supplies swimming against a heavy tide that is my father’s uterus or I am qualified to give you pain by telling the truth   swimming against a heavy tide I did not cross my arms over the uncomfortable region I am qualified to give you pain by telling the truth a single time wasn’t enough   I did not cross my arms over the uncomfortable region in spite of all directives a single time wasn’t enough curl back my lip to show my teeth   in spite of all directives great horsey thighs curl back my lip to show my teeth slightly more oily skin, sexual excitement, sweat   great horsey thighs the night of reaction slightly more oily skin, sexual excitement, sweat I spent an hour in the bathroom   the night of reaction booty shorts leopard print hoop earrings an hour in the bathroom nourishing the spinal cord   booty shorts leopard print hoop earrings the fantastic confused news nourishing the spinal cord cries of delight and of enthusiasm   the fantastic confused news spanking facesitting female ejaculation cries of delight and of enthusiasm lively agitation   spanking facesitting female ejaculation my head is making my shoulders look huge lively agitation urination in various contexts   my head is making my shoulders look huge just an image but it has potential urination in various contexts all the latent possibilities   just an image but it has potential then all of me would be full of courage all the latent possibilities I’ve had it up to here   then all of me would be full of courage a sexual colossus of self-design I’ve had it up to here bare-chested on a winter day   a sexual colossus of self-design a thorn planted in the somatic field of the mind bare-chested on a winter day my arms in that photo, two slabs of meat   -STEPHANIE YOUNG Stephanie Young lives and works in Oakland. Her most recent book is URSULA or UNIVERSITY. Other poetry includes Picture Palace and Telling the Future Off. With Juliana Spahr, she edited A Megaphone: Some Enactments, Some Numbers, and Some Essays about the Continued Usefulness of Crotchless-pants-and-a- machine-gun Feminism. She edited the anthology Bay Poetics, and is managing editor of Deep Oakland (www.deepoakland.org).