“FAQ ad absurdum” by Mollie O’Leary Posted in: Poems – Tags: Mollie O'Leary
FAQ ad absurdum
By Mollie O’Leary
Selected by Chen Chen
Q: Without your trauma, would you still be a poet?
1. Biscuit tins can be easily repurposed.
2. A child keeps a biscuit tin under her bed,
containing a pendant of the Virgin Mary,
a drawing she wants to give her grandfather,
who is dead, and five dollars for emergencies.
3. The child loves to eat biscuits.
Q: Do you write any happy poems?
1. Fiberglass insulation looks like cotton candy.
2. The child has trouble distinguishing between
safe and unsafe forms of touch.
3. The child either goes to bed covered in sugar
or covered in glass.
Q: What does family mean to you?
1. Flying fish, adapting to momentarily leap
out of water as a means of escape, occupy
a space between cod and bird.
2. The child is a pleasure to have in class,
though she often hides in bathroom stalls
during dictation tests.
3. The child hopes to one day grow wings
like a flying fish.
Q: Will you ever move on from this?
1. Some people do not remember the exact
amount of money in their wallets.
2. The child steals money from her father’s
wallet and sneaks it into her mother’s wallet.
3. The child, as the integer one, multiplied
by the value of any dollar bill in the wallet
will return that same number, over and over.
Q: Are you grateful it wasn’t worse?
1. Children don’t like to clean their rooms.
2. The child likes to clean her room so it will be
tidy on the off chance that she dies in her sleep
and a coroner needs to collect her.
3. The child is not a child.
Q: Does having a positive mindset help?
1. Reality is unbearable (P)
2. The child learns to bear this reality (Q)
3. If P is false, then Q is true, but the child
exists if and only if P is true.
Originally published in COUNTERCLOCK, 2021
Mollie O’Leary is a poet from Massachusetts, now living in Vermont. She holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Washington. Mollie’s chapbook The Forgetting Curve was published in 2023 through Poetry Online’s chapbook contest. Her poetry has appeared in Chestnut Review, wildness, McNeese Review, and elsewhere. Mollie’s full-length poetry manuscript Touchstruck was a finalist for the National Poetry Series 2026. Her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart, Best of the Net, Best New Poets, and Best Spiritual Literature. Find more of her work at mollieoleary.com.