Chapter 2: “poem I wrote after I woke up at 6 a.m. as a joke” — Summary and Analysis
⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This guide contains detailed spoilers for the entire novel. Proceed only if you've finished reading or are comfortable knowing the plot.
Summary
The speaker is stuck on the C train in New York City, carrying a beaded bag. A fellow passenger tells her he owns the best sound system in lower Manhattan. In the imagined near future, people are habitually late to their therapy appointments and restaurants seat diners without waiting for the whole party. The speaker looks forward to checking her phone and, years later, listening to her daughter’s first podcast. During a therapy session, she asks why she should want to grow. Her therapist replies that growth will mean less suffering. Unconvinced, the speaker sarcastically wonders what the therapist is trying to prove. The poem ends with a memory of an Italian waiter who told her that the only thing that matters is the sound of rain. She then asks, bluntly, whether he wanted to sleep with her.
Key Events
- The speaker and her beaded bag become stuck on the C train.
- A man on the train boasts about having the best sound system in lower Manhattan.
- The speaker imagines two future trends: people arriving 25 minutes late to therapy, and restaurants not requiring the full party to be seated.
- She expresses excitement about checking her phone and anticipates hearing her daughter’s first podcast.
- In a therapy session, the speaker questions the value of personal growth; the therapist says it will lead to less suffering.
- The speaker reacts with skepticism (“what is she trying to prove?”).
- She recalls an Italian waiter’s philosophical remark about the sound of rain.
- The poem ends with the speaker wondering whether the waiter wanted to have sex with her.
Character Development
The speaker presents herself as restless, ironic, and caught between a desire for growth and a resistance to it. Her encounter with the man on the train shows her openness to random interactions, yet her internal monologue reveals a sharp, skeptical mind. The therapist appears as a voice of conventional wisdom—growth reduces suffering—but the speaker undermines that wisdom by questioning its motives. The Italian waiter, a minor figure from memory, becomes a symbol of romantic ambiguity: his poetic comment may have been genuine or a pickup line. Through these interactions, the speaker emerges as someone who wants meaning but distrusts easy answers.
Themes, Symbols, and Motifs
- Modern Disconnection – The poem starts with a subway delay and pivots to phone-checking and podcast listening, framing contemporary life as a series of fragmented, tech-mediated moments.
- Therapy and Self-Improvement – The session is treated with comic suspicion. The speaker resists the idea that growth is inherently desirable, suggesting a reluctance to embrace adulthood.
- Desire and Ambiguity – The concluding question (“did he even want to fuck me?”) collapses a poetic observation into raw, unresolved longing. The rain sound motif stands for something pure and unattainable.
- Absurdity of Everyday Life – The poem’s structure (waking up as a “joke,” the beaded bag, the boastful sound-system guy) layers trivial details with existential queries.
Why This Chapter Matters
This early poem establishes Catherine Cohen’s signature tone: confessional, deadpan, and brisk. It introduces the speaker’s core conflict—wanting to grow versus suspecting growth is a scam—that recurs throughout God I Feel Modern Tonight. The blend of mundane transit, therapy banter, and sexual curiosity encapsulates the collection’s central tension between vulnerability and cynicism. The line about the daughter’s first podcast also hints at a future the speaker both fears and craves, making this poem a miniature blueprint for the book’s emotional landscape.
Study Questions and Answers
1. What does the speaker’s question about the Italian waiter reveal about her state of mind?
Answer: The question shows that beneath her detached, observational tone, the speaker is preoccupied with desire and validation. She turns a philosophical remark into a personal test of whether she was desired. This suggests insecurity and a need to be wanted, even as she mocks the very idea.
2. How does the poem use the future tense, and what effect does that create?
Answer: The speaker imagines a “future” where therapy appointments start late and restaurants are more flexible. These predictions are playful and ironic, simultaneously mocking contemporary annoyances and longing for a world that accommodates her messiness. The future tense lets her escape the present while satirizing it.
3. Why might the poet have included the detail of the beaded bag in the first line?
Answer: The beaded bag feels both fashionable and impractical—it’s an accessory that signals a certain personality (quirky, feminine, slightly self-aware). Being “stuck” with it on a stalled train emphasizes the speaker’s entanglement with her own curated identity. The bag becomes a symbol of the small, deliberate choices that define modern self-presentation.