Poetry by Emily Joy Oomen

                        Robert Couse-Baker CC



​Leading Women in Romantic Comedies Greeting Me as Friends
Believe it or not, we all talked about things other than men.
 
I found Sally from When Harry Met Sally in a comfy armchair at a café after she finished
interviewing someone for The New York Times.

We talked about journalism and how she taught me that having wild hair is sexy, it is ok
to marry when you’re in your 30’s, never having kids and is perfectly fine, and to always
say what you want (even if it’s complicated).

                                                          I found Mindy Lahiri from The Mindy Project on the subway
                                                                                   in a colorful frock on her way home from work.
                                She gave me a happy meal full of contraception and told me to have fun.
 
Carrie Bradshaw from Sex and the City invited me to her 50th birthday party.
When I arrived, she hugged me as soon as she saw me, 
and told me to never be the girl who takes her glasses off to look beautiful.
Then she gifted me sparkly magenta frames.
  
           Lara Jean from To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before and I lay laughing about love notes
                                                                         on a pink duvet cover that matches her personality
                                in her house that smells just like our friendship: chocolate chip cookies.
                                                                                                           “Hey,” she says to me one moment,
                                      “Always let your heart speak. You never know where it will lead you.”
 
During a one-on-one with Monica Wright from Love & Basketball,
she passed me a basketball 
with the words ‘stay true to yourself’ carved into it.
 
             Kathleen Kelly from You’ve Got Mail and I met through an email-based book club 
                                                                                     that is a part of The Shop Around the Corner.
                       The independent bookstore was revitalized through crowdfunding in 2015
                                         fueled by the enragement of the death of independent book shops.
                                                                    Even though we are the only two left in the book club, 
                                                                                                          we enjoy it thoroughly nonetheless. 
 
Rachel Chu from Crazy Rich Asians and I met 
at a swanky Singaporean bar in New York after her office hours.
While telling her how I feel stuck,
she reminded me that the unexpected can happen. 
 
               Erica Barry from Something’s Gotta Give and I met at her fancy Hamptons house
                                                 which I have no idea how she can afford being just a playwright.
                                           We talked about wine and how you are never too old to fall in love. 

Emily Joy Oomen is a journalist and multi-media poet. Her work has been featured in venues that range from the Athens International Video Poetry Festival to Vice to Buzzfeed to Entropy. She has work forthcoming in BBC. Her current work-in-progress is a full-length manuscript, titled Artificial/Reality, which explores artificiality and reality in this digital age. You can find her on Instagram @poetic_espresso.