Update on first workshop, and a poem!

I posted an update on my first workshop over at the MFA Chronicles tonight if anyone wants to read it.

And, since Enru asked, here is the first poem I workshopped. We had to respond to the chapbooks, as I've mentioned, and then take one poem from one of those chapbooks and use it as inspiration for our poem. I appreciated the use of form in Jeffrey Harrison's book, and so I wrote a villanelle 'in response' to his villanelle.

Don’t Ask Don’t Tell

Although it feels empty, it’s never quiet here –
rustling leaves, cicadas, those critical crows.
I think maybe it is silence that I fear,

that I wouldn’t know what to do if all I could hear
was the beat of my heart, the way breath grows
to fill the emptiness. It’s never quiet here –

I fall asleep to the whine of insects beating near
my window screen, reaching toward the glow
of lamplight. I think it is silence that I fear,

even more than failure, no response, a deaf ear,
my mother’s refusal to hear her name even though she knows.
Although it feels empty it’s never quite here

that we meet. My mother will talk for a year
about our relatives, her garden, the climbing roses.
I think maybe it is silence that she fears,

or giving me a chance to tell her what she doesn’t want to hear.
Crows wake me early, my mother weeds beans in rows.
Although I feel the empty space between us it’s never quiet here
but I think maybe it is an inevitable silence that I fear.

What I Fear

One of the last PAD prompts was to write a sestina, so I did. The themes come from two places - one a very old prompt I took from Stacey, which is just to take all your fears or anxieties and write them into a poem - and one taking off on the theme of a poem I read Monday night.

What I Fear

These are the things I fear:
both success and failure, love
and never finding love, being
trapped in a house that’s burning,
cars stopped on a bridge,
growing old or dying young.

I no longer feel young
in the winter, and I fear
the ice on each bridge,
want only warmth and love,
your face above a book, fireplace burning
beside our two chairs, the simple act of being

with you. Each human being
can be happy but only the young
see it as a right. This ends with the burning
of a hand on a stove, the lessons to fear
what you do not know, that love
sometimes punishes, that not all bridges

can or should be crossed. A bridge
just outside of town where we went to be
alone, threw our bras in the creek and made love
in the car for the first time. We were young
enough to be reckless, old enough to fear
judgment. My mother told us we would burn

in hell, her knuckles white, her arms a burning
cross over her chest. She can not bridge
the gap between God and love. Her fear
is for my soul, her guilt for not being
able to avert this crisis when I was young.
There are so many kinds of love

and so many feelings that are not love:
to be trapped, to be forced, to burn
inside with shame. When I was young
I learned to fear escalators and bridges
and strange men and drugs. I learned to be
good is to be safe, and this is what I truly fear:

that I will let fear keep me from love,
that nothing will be enough to burn
away the bridges sunk deep when I was young.

Genesis

I don't think I've mentioned it before, but I am going to try to do the April Poem-A-Day Challenge. I tried awhile back to write a poem a day for a month, but I picked a really busy month, and I was attempting it on my own, with no prompts, or challengers, so I'm hoping this will work better. I am sure some of them will be truly awful, but I'll post some that are less awful. The first prompt was to write a poem about origins. My mind went straight to the creation story in Genesis because the very talented Scott Woods mentioned on Monday that he's writing a series of haiku that are like a summary of the Bible.

Genesis

I was never thrilled with the creation story.
There is no time I can not remember
knowing that God created the earth
in six short days, and I always thought:
where's the fun in that? How could He
appreciate what He'd done if the distance
between void and verdant paradise
was less than a week? I always thought
God must be like my father, a hard worker,
with no time for fun. My father builds
everything as quickly as possible, he could
miss entire phyla of creatures, never noticing
the arthropods or the nematodes until Adam,
the darling, the only boy, asked him
Why are there so many worms?

A super-rough draft of something that occurred to me while driving

My father and mother always told me
to stand up straight, to follow
the right path, when the going
got tough and the load got heavy
to square my shoulders and carry
whatever was piled upon me.

I am not lazy, father.

I can not square my shoulders.
One is higher than the other,
trapezoidal, shoulder blade to
shoulder blade, invisible line
straight down to one hip bone,
a right angle to the other hip, and back
up to the shoulder. I am not square,
nor even, I do not fit into any box.

I am not evil, mother.

I can not choose one side, one sex,
one lover. I move through life
from one right angled street corner
to another, to the streets that meet
at angles, the ones that wind
like snakes, serpents of wisdom,
the pain of the knowledge that is good
and evil, separation and truth.

The Composition of the Air I Breathe

There is no substitute for oxygen
but the warmth of your breath
makes me almost wish to suffocate
on carbon dioxide and kisses.

I don't mean to die, but to push
my lungs to their limit, to fall
into you until I am gasping
and terrified and alive.

Suicide doesn't interest me.
Living is the true challenge,
to keep running, breath after
freezing breath, icy December air

clouding in front of me, eyes
tearing, watching my feet
so snow does not get the better
of my balance. I struggle to hold

myself upright in my mother's eyes.
She prays for me every night
as I lie in your arms and she fears
we're on our way to hell. Of love

she knows nothing, claims words
from the original Hebrew or Greek
condemn me. If you wish
to understand me, you must understand

her as well. She is resigned to sorrow,
a dutiful wife, a grieving mother,
blaming herself, praying for my soul
and for His forgiveness for sins

no one has committed. I love her.
I love you. I place my heart like my feet
carefully on a slippery path, sunlight
glints off ice, off your beauty, off the tears

that come unbidden when you hold me.
It always comes down to this:
I can not change who I am,
I can not change where I came from.

Running

And something very new. A prose poem. Obviously. I may have posted the beginning of this here earlier, because the initial image popped into my head back in August, one day while I was out running.

Running

The weeds along the riverside path where you run in late August smell of pollen, of dust and exhaustion, a tired heavy sweetness like the lace on your grandmother’s wedding gown that crumbled in your hands when you cleaned out the attic after she died last year. Your heart was raw and stinging from a breakup then; when you cried at the funeral you were crying for them both, for your grandmother who’d spent 85 years giving herself to her family and for your ex-girlfriend who’d spent a year trying to give you what you claimed to want.

When you heard the story your aunt told, that your grandmother said the happiest times of her life were between moving to the city and getting married, and then the years after her husband died, the only times she’d been free, when you heard that story, you cried for yourself too, and you thought maybe that’s where you got it, that desire to be free above all else, the way you always run away from love.

Photographing Ghosts

This is an old one, from my last year at BG. I went with with a friend to take pictures in an old house. Some of the images are real, some are made up. As old as this one is, it still feels somehow complete to me. It's been revised of course, several times.

Photographing Ghosts

I’ve heard the house is haunted
but there is no evidence
of ghosts, only empty rooms
and dirty shards of windows.
There is very little left
that has not decayed or been
stolen, but I finish one roll
of film and start another before
the winter sun starts to fade.

I focus on Mason jars lining a shelf
in what must have been the pantry,
a stained sink filled with dust
and crumbled bits of ceiling,
flowered wallpaper clinging
in faint strips to the stairwell,
curling at the ends as it tries
to pull free of the wall.

I hesitate before ascending,
not knowing what I’ll find
or if the steps are sound. Upstairs
a door with its flaking coat
of blue paint does no want to open
as though someone holds it shut.
I push a little harder, afraid it will
break, but it gives up and opens. A gust
of bitter wind shakes the second floor.

The door creaks behind me as I enter,
rust flaking from corroded hinges
and falling with a sigh. Inside the room
is a baby’s high chair, legs broken
off, a fractured piece of drywall
in the seat where the child
should have been. Sun comes through
the vacant window in harsh bright
angles. The room glows with pain.

I look away, find time in a closet
in stacks of newspapers, bundled
and tied with baling twine. The date
on top is 1951, just before an unknown
disaster, then emptiness, a myth
about some ghost.

And then vagrants sleeping on wood floors,
oblivious, teenagers breaking in
almost hoping to meet the supernatural
but seeing nothing, leaving broken
bottles glittering in the morning.
Their brown and green shards
are still embedded in the cracks
between floorboards and catch
light like tiny mirrors.

And after these invaders, the house died,
the colored tiles falling from the roof,
rain eroding carved stonework
around windows. And now, every
so often, people stop their cars,
pull into the cinders beside the road,
and take photographs of the house,
picturesque in its decay. The ambitious
venture inside, searching as I am for spirits
or for nuances of shadow, forms and
textures in the wood, the brick, the plaster.

But no matter how many rooms I examine,
the story escapes me, leaving hints
in washed out color, cold January rays
which can’t illuminate the past. I can’t tell
what color the flowers on the wallpaper used to be,
how the vegetables in the pantry tasted,
why no children took over the farm
after their deaths. The house alone
knows what happened between
the headlines in the closet and the broken
highchair in the attic, and its ghosts
won’t whisper into curious ears.

Haiku for my sister

just what the title says...

i wish i could give her better advice, but there really is none to give. life is what it is, and our families are what they are. we each make our own choices and our lives, whether we choose to own that responsibility or not.

Haiku for My Youngest Sister

When I was your age
I was more in love even
than I admitted.

She broke my heart, just
as I broke my mothers heart -
not what she wanted.

You could learn from this.
None of us are the answer
for anyone else.

I Am Not the One She Wanted

I Am Not the One She Wanted

I am not pretty and silent,
I can not sit and wait with crossed
ankles and folded hands
for God to redeem the world.

I do not pray at night
for a man to marry, a provider,
children to raise up in the ways
they should go, the ways she raised me.

Sometimes, mother, they do depart.

I am thin and poor and alone.
I worked all day, then ran four miles.
I am self-sufficient, and I don’t believe
in that white-haired, white-light

Patriarch with his condemnations
and abominations.

I am not the one you wanted either;
I will not dictate my will like the goddess
you would make me. For every gift
you think I have, I lack the skill

or the courage to use it.

I have grown too large for one role,
remain too small for the other.

Just a quote

from Margaret Atwood's poem "Spelling"

"A word after a word
after a word is power."

It's a great poem. You can read the whole thing here.

I'm feeling rather pastoral today....will probably go to the park soon and sit in the sun and write some nature poetry. I'm listening to A Prairie Home Companion on the radio, and someone is singing "The Garden Song" which my mother used to have on a record. It's a bittersweet sort of thing, hearing songs she used to play on those old records. I loved my mother with no reservations back then.

Target Practice

I wrote this a couple Mondays ago, started it during the reading, then wrote a kind of long piece later that night. It was four parts, sort of parallel, but telling different stories. I was a little tipsy by the end of it, and it ended up sort of long and rambly. This is a revision of the first section, which I read last night at Larry's.

And yes, believe it or not, this one is basically true.

Target Practice

My father would sit in the kitchen and shoot
Beebees in the direction of the dog
When he barked too loud
Or too long. They’re only beebees,
He’d say. They won’t really hurt him.
They fell harmlessly in the field
Behind the doghouse, decapitating
Weeds – Queen Anne’s Lace, wild alfalfa,
The grass my mother called Timothy. They lodged themselves
In the grooved crumbly bark of the oak tree,
And in the white-painted wood
Of the doghouse, all bleached and peeling.
And some struck his dusty black fur
Embedding themselves in the flesh of his flank
Or his shoulder. When I sat
In the yard and stroked his sun-warmed side
They felt like Braille where the skin
Had grown over the metal beads.
One day he must have turned his head
Hoping perhaps to meet the foe that stung
And a tiny lead sphere struck his nose.
I cried as I touched the cool moist black skin
Soft and giving except in one little tiny spot.

untitled

untitled, unfinished....

These days my life feels like a low budget horror movie
Written by, directed by, and starring two brothers from Pennsylvania,
The suspense too obvious, so many clues that nothing surprises.

The bricks over the windows of the brand new haunted house
Are drawn in Photoshop, the blind man can see just fine,
And the monster in the basement is always my brother,

The zombie grave my mother’s. I find her memories
When I look for them least, leaping out at me from crowds,
A haircut, a pair of sunglasses, an embarrassed glance.

But oh, she’s not dead, don’t let me fool you.
That would be too easy, mourning for her. It’s so much more
Complex to love and hate and strive to understand

Someone who still breathes out her prayers every night,
Still walks the land, plants a garden, plays an old
Out of tune piano when she’s alone.

and a revision of this. I learned, after writing the first draft, that one of the brothers referenced actually died this spring. So in lieu of a title, I dedicated to him, and revised to carry more of the movie images through to the end. I read this one last week along with "Target Practice".

For John Polonia

Some days my life feels like a low budget horror movie
Written by, directed by, and of course starring
Two nerdy looking brothers from Nowhere, Pennsylvania.

Everything feels delayed, a decade too late, and the timing is never quite right -
It moves so slowly, dragging over every detail of a dark wood, a dark room,
And then jumps back to a past that looks just the same.

The suspense is too obvious, so many clues that nothing surprises,
But it still doesn’t make sense. I don’t know why the aliens are here,
And I really don’t want to see any more breasts.

The bricks over the windows of the brand new haunted house
Are drawn in Photoshop, the blind man can see just fine,
And the monster in the basement is always my brother,

The zombie’s grave my mother’s. Her memories find me
When I expect them least, leaping out at me from crowds -
A haircut, a pair of sunglasses, an embarrassed glance.

But oh, she’s not dead, don’t be fooled by the dramatic music.
That would be too easy, mourning for her. Instead look into those glasses,
See the cameraman’s reflection. It’s so much more interesting

To love and hate and strive to understand someone who still breathes
Out her prayers every night, still walks the land, plants seeds in the earth,
And plays an old out of tune piano when she’s alone.

A poem for my mother

a beginning of one at least.

I have half your DNA, your dry
Quiet humor, your love of words
And plants, the small breasts
We both both love and hate. I used
To wish I also had your dark hair,
Shining and wavy like something alive,
Your skin that tans, your small bones,
But I am his daughter too.

I glimpse you in the mirror sometimes
When my light hair is hidden
Under a paisley scarf and shadows
Blur my pale, freckled skin. I feel you
Inside me as I stand in the kitchen
Washing greens from my garden,
Then I lose you when I lose
My temper over something small.
I am his daughter too.

The River That Doesn't Exist

Another new, "ink still wet", poem. Sort of a prose poem, I guess. Not sure about the title, whether I want the long version or the short version of the title, or something different entirely.

ETA: after reading this at Larry's tonight, I'm posting the edits I did before the reading. I got a good response, including a personal comment from the guy with the cool voice.


Fictional Truths About a Childhood That Never Happened and a River That Doesn’t Exist

The river in my hometown always looked muddy, even during the drought of 1988, when the thermometer on our back porch read 110 in the shade and we all ran around in our underwear, even if, at ten, I was a little too old to do so. My mother wore a bathing suit top and shorts, still skinny after four babies.

At twelve I felt so adult when I stood in church beside her, three inches taller already, and raised my hands, closed my eyes and swayed as I sang of my desire for God. “As the deer panteth for the water so my soul longeth after thee.” I knew nothing of desire and so little of longing.

The pastor’s youngest daughter jumped off the highest bridge in the county when she was fifteen, her body found miles downstream. Everyone knew why, but no one would say it.

That water travels into another river and then into the larger one that names this state, and it keeps on going. My sisters and I used to walk barefoot in the creek at the back of the property and talk about touching the ocean through that dirty water. I later learned that our shallow stream dried up long before ever reaching that river which really does, eventually, fight its way free.

In Clintonville in May

One more, then back to work... I've not read this one in public yet. I started writing it last week during the readings; it's probably slightly rude that I often write poems while other people are reading, but I get ideas then, and it works. Almost every Monday I'll scribble a few lines during the Open Mic, then go home and flesh out a poem.


In Clintonville in May

I chose this house, this street,
Because it feels like Lakewood,
The place I was most miserable,
Where I should have been the happiest –

I recall my grandmother’s revelation
After Christmas dinner, when I was
Nineteen and the men had all gone
Downstairs to football on the television
While the women – my aunts,
My mother and grandmother, myself –
Cleared the table and made
Coffee. I walked back into
The kitchen just in time to hear her say
The happiest years of her life
Were between graduation and
Marriage, and now, in the years since
George died.

George was my grandfather, six feet
Three inches of steelworker, red-
Haired like my father, like me,
A stationary mountain at the head
Of the table, silent and coldly forbidding.
I was scared of him my whole life, his temper
having attained the status of legend.
He’d been dead ten years
When she said it, and even I knew
We’d all been happier since.

I should have been happy
There – the house of white,
The many-paned windows,
A wide shallow porch and a shaded
Backyard I could mow in half
An hour. I couldn’t stay.
I left every weekend to see him.
I left at the end of my lease.

And years later, after he left, I chose
this house - White again, with this porch
And this yard and these lilacs budding
In the springtime sun weeks before
They will bloom in Cleveland.