Luke Koesters is a queer, Asian-American poet from Omaha, NE. He is currently attending the University of Nebraska at Omaha where he is pursuing a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Fiction and Poetry. He is currently working with and had work accepted by 13th Floor, UNO’s literary magazine.
You can read 10,000 Years of Happiness in the January 2024 issue.
Would you like to tell us a little bit more about your poem? For instance, how or why you wrote it, or perhaps provide some extra context?
10,000 Years of Happiness was inspired by the recent passing of my girlfriend’s mom, Lori Monjarez-Hill. Lori’s death and the subsequent selling of her house are painful moments we still grieve every day. Watching someone you love sort through their mom’s possessions and memories is a difficult process to do justice, but ultimately was a poem I wrote because I did not want to lose those days to memory. Both women who inhabit this poem cultivated a relationship that was unique and beautiful in my eyes, which only made its rupturing more painful.
Why was the poetic form the best fit for this particular piece of work?
A poem made sense to me because the moment I was writing toward was anchored in its imagery and had an uneasiness that I felt was captured best in tercets. I like the focus a poem puts on images and the images are what stuck out to me in that moment and what I wanted to centre. A poem felt like a good frame for what I was trying to show.
How do you revise your work?
I am still an undergraduate student as of now and I am open to any revision method. The most consistent practice I have is getting to a third draft. This way I can see the poem in multiple different ways and conclusions and pick one direction or take pieces from all the drafts and combine them into one final draft.
What are you reading or watching or listening to lately that intrigues or inspires you?
A couple of poetry works that I enjoyed a lot recently are Philip Schaefer’s collection, Bad Summon and Kaveh Akbar’s chapbook, Portrait of the Alcoholic and what I am watching right now is Boots Riley’s “I’m a Virgo”. I think that all of these works approach imagery and storytelling in interesting, inventive ways that has me coming back to them.
In terms of poetic style or craft, is there a big question you are trying to find an answer for?
I think a big question I am trying to find an answer for is where the balance is. I never want to write something that is too ambiguous, but in the same breath, I want images to be the focus of my poems. I think finding a balance between when to show and when to tell, when to be direct and when to trust the reader are questions I will always think about when writing poetry.