After Long Silence

It's been a very long time since I've posted here, and that's okay.

I won't apologize for it.

We're approaching the New Year, and I am in a very good place to be starting over. I graduated with my MFA in May, stayed in Pennsylvania over the summer and taught one last class at Penn State, then moved back to Columbus in August. I am currently teaching as an adjunct instructor at a community college and doing some freelance proofreading. I stayed with friends for awhile but moved into a lovely, quirky apartment in Olde Towne East in November. I am also recently single, after attempting to get out of the relationship last spring and then falling back into it for awhile. In a way, it feels like I'm only now able to really start my life post-MFA.

Things I Cannot Say

Some days I feel stupider than I can ever remember feeling, frustrated with my lack of knowledge, my lack of language, my inability to join the conversation. Sometimes I question what I'm doing here, and what I will do next. Do I want the PhD? Do I believe, at any level, that I'm capable of it? Is it taking the easy way out by not even trying to apply? Do I really want it? Or do I just want to write and teach? Is teaching my calling, even more than writing?

The questions only breed more questions.

But I don't have to know right now.

---

Sometimes I don't know how I got so lucky, to be where I am right now, to have found what I've found, against my will, against all my expectations. Some moments are too beautiful to experience with my eyes open; the only way to keep from crying is to close my eyes and rest my face against your neck. Sometimes I want to say it too.

Creation, etc.

Thinking about what art is, what power(s) we invest into the objects we create, how they become independent entities, about the ability of narration to create meaning, how experiences become real. About Nietzsche and Rushdie, significance and identity and language, about poetry, about the physical world, my physical body, the triumph of mind and community over physical weakness. About love, what it is, what it isn't, what it has been, what it should be. About gender, its irrelevance, its social construction, about the way life surprises me. About time, the sublime, and drinking wine.....

(Just threw that last one in because it rhymes, but it's also true.)

Let this suffice for an update: this is week 9, we got snow last Thursday in PA, I ran my half-marathon in Columbus on Sunday, I am busy, and I am happy in ways I never expected.

Ghazal - "Nothing"

You know I love ghazals, and there was a post on Poetic Asides about them the other day, so I wrote one off the cuff that evening and thought I'd toss it up here since I haven't posted much poetry recently. I changed one line from the version I posted here (You can read the post about the form and a few other people's submissions as well).

I loved her four years and took away nothing
but memories and photos that add up to nothing.

In Ohio, it is hard not to love summer, the bright green
of grass, the brightness of bodies wearing next to nothing.

We were both eighteen, bare-legged on a summer night,
sweet smell of cornsilk, so faint as to be almost nothing.

An apartment without air conditioning. Open windows
all night long. Two bodies sweating. I would change nothing.

Sun and moon love earth the way I loved her, the only way
they know how: offering themselves, asking nothing.

It has been ten years since she left. Still when I drink wine,
I wonder what I should have done differently. The answer: nothing.

With all this time to think, Emily has realized
that without both love and loss, life is worth nothing.

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.

To The One I've Not Yet Met

To The One I've Not Yet Met

Speak to me in your own language,
your own voice and vocabulary. Do not try
to impress me or assume you know
my language. Speak to me as to yourself.
If I understand, we'll know this is love.

from Sunday's PAD prompt to write about miscommunication, after thinking about how sometimes i feel so few people, even among my friends, really speak the same language as me.

Polygon

one of the poems I wrote last week. based, very loosely, on me sitting on the golf course in our college town with a boyfriend of mine from way back when.

Polygon

The grass above the second hole
embosses patterns on the backs
of our legs. We are lying under the moon
on the only hill in this town.

You take my hand without looking,
knowing where our fingers will meet.

You know how we always draw the earth
as a circle? you say as you trace fingernails
lightly over my palm. You can feel
me nod. It’s not. It’s not really round.

We’ve snuck onto the golf course,
neither of us comes from a country club
family. The earth is really a huge polygon,
with millions, billions, of sides. We are
cold enough and drunk enough
that this makes heartbreaking sense.

I grasp your hand and stare at the sky,
feeling the earth dig into my skin
and the back of my skull. I think
you’re right. That explains the bruises,
the corners we run into, the angles
we trip over when the way should
be smooth, how hard it is for a girl
to just walk in a straight line.

A February Lament

(For what it's worth, I'm actually having quite a decent week. Just so as no one is worried about me after reading this.)


A February Lament

i.

I slide from door to sidewalk to car
to work, feet slipping on ice that will not
melt no matter how many times
I follow the path. I slid from your bed
to the door, down the stairs, and home.
I slip on patterns I've followed for years.
I walk in my sleep toward the guillotine.

ii.

Cold surrounds my bed
even with the heavy blanket
of lavender plaid. You said
it was too hot with our bodies
under the blanket, too cold
without it. We failed
to find temperance.

iii.

I had coffee with my exgirlfriend
and saw for the first time
grey strands in her hair.
She is four years younger
than I, and I know my darkness
is borrowed, running out.

iv.

The ice cracks under foot today,
the weekend will bring a thaw
before freezing smooth again
and even more dangerous. The blade
of winter hovers, one thin rope
of sunshine keeps my head attached.

My knees are frozen to the ground,
my hands are tied firmly
by thirty years of loneliness.

I can not get out of my own way.

The waiting game begins

Today, after work, I mailed the very last piece of the very last grad school application. Throughout this process, I've spent $140 to take the GRE, $451 on application fees, roughly $20 in postage, almost $10 in printing (I did most of it for free at work), plus a package of manilla envelopes, some whiteout, a package of paperclips, and a ridiculous amount of time and energy. But now it is all out of my hands; my fate is out there in the hands of the universe and its infinite wisdom. I believe that it will give me the options I need to make a good decision.

And, because I haven't posted any poems recently, here is a very new first draft I scribbled out last night during the Open Mic. ETA: after reading this again a few times, I think it's really awful, and am deleting most of it. I'll leave the beginning and end, as a reminder to myself what it was about.

Hold On As Long As You Can (tentative title)

Ten years ago if my wishes had been granted
there would have been three: her,
California, grad school. I dreamed
last night that they’d all come true.

(removed stanzas)

... She was dying.
We both knew it. I walked outside

in the dream. It was snowing. Is this
still California, or have I gone back
in time to Ohio? I didn’t cry.
I’d gotten all I ever wanted and held
her all these years.

I wake and reach for her, who’s never been
in this apartment or this bed. Years have slipped
over me since the last time I thought of the life
we could have had. Tears fall suddenly as I grasp
the human truth. Even if I’d gotten everything
I wished for, I would still have lost her someday.

It's from a dream I had a week or so ago, which was truly creepy and sad and strange.

On Finding Love at Thirty

I had too much coffee tonight, so when I came home, I ate a bunch of chocolate (leftover Christmas candy) and tried to write a poem, or actual a couple at the same time. This comes the closest to finished of anything. It’s a pantoum. Every time I have ever tried to write one, it gets away from me, and I’ve never been able to get it back to the beginning/end. I’m not sure how successful this is, since it’s late, and I’m tired, but at least I did work the first couple lines back in and got to an end. So, it’s something.

On Finding Love at Thirty

Each snowflake is distinct
and toothed, cold, clear,
against the glass. We drink
red wine, glasses kissed near

and toothed, cold, clear
in your hands, my thoughts sink
like red wine in a glass kissed near
to nothing. It is impossible to think

in your hands, my thoughts sink
past the words, silence is dear
but nothing is impossible. To think
only a year ago I feared

these words, held silence so dear
I relished the cold, stood on the brink
only a year ago. I feared
the melt of ice, drops of ink

fallen and cold. I stood on the brink,
pen poised to write a future clear,
melting ice like drops of ink,
blue on white, cold as tears,

my pen poised to write. A future clear
appeared to me, the way you think,
blue, white, cold as tears
but sweeter than anything

that’s appeared to me. The way you think
amazes me, that you can love clear
through me, sweeter than anything,
braver, my sugared armor melts near

a heat that amazes me. You love clear,
the only one, a sea in which to sink.
I am no longer brave, sugared armor melted near
my skin, your skin, the difference indistinct,

we are one. A sea in which to sink,
crystals of sugar, snowflakes plus tears,
my skin, your skin, sweet, salt, indistinct,
but there is nothing left to fear

in crystal of sugar, in snowflakes or tears.
We melt together. We sit up and drink
because there is nothing left to fear.
We pour more wine, quiet now. I think

we were meant together. Sit up. Drink
with me. I love you, this thing I feared.
Pour more wine. Quiet now. I think
I love you. You are sugar-like tears

to me. I love you. This thing I feared
against the glass. We drink,
we love. Like sugar, like tears,
each snowflake is distinct.

American Sentences: Two Girls in Love, a Cold Ohio Night

I watched Romeo and Juliet (the 1990's version by Baz Luhrman, which I just love - I really think it's a brilliant re-envisioning of the story) this weekend, so that's in this poem, as is the religious issue my mother is having with the fact that I have a girlfriend. And the collaborative poem I was working on Friday is being written in American Sentences, so I am thinking in terms of 17 syllables at a time.

American Sentences: Two Girls in Love, a Cold Ohio Night

The sky is the color of the slate roof of the house where I grew up.
Snow threatens to return and cover all the tracks we have made so far.

How far we've walked, you and I, fingers numb from cold but still holding hands.
We will outpace the storm, find or create shelter long before limbs fail.

We've both read "To Build a Fire" and we know the temptation to lie down.
Let the snow be our bed and we will never rise, we two Juliets.

This is a modern tragedy: lovers blessed by the stars, crossed by God.
It is up to us to triumph, clear a nest, build a tent, and a fire.

Your cheeks bold pink, your eyes misted from the wind, never more beautiful.
We traverse a wilderness of snow, warm inside, love like a beacon.

Follow love. Do not stop moving forward. The stars will outlast us all.

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.

Visual Aid

Here in the dark language fails.
Your hand traces rivers on the map
of my back. They all flow south.

You look at me without speaking
but I need to fill this space, make manifest
the destiny I feel lying naked in your arms.

Language fails. I can not explain
what you will find as your explore me.
I want to warn you, to tell you

I am riddled with danger, mountains
of snow, and valleys of hurt, miles and miles
of solitude. But you are young and brave

and your fingers are so gentle on my skin.
I will guide you. Together maybe
we’ll reach the far shore. Language fails

but the maps do not lie. You draw
me closer. I press my words to your mouth
and let the warm waters rise.

Prose (there may be a poem in here towards the end)

You sit across from me, your dark brows drawn down, eyes gazing at the screen of your laptop, as I do the same. Or I try. I try to work. Write, revise, repeat. But I keep sneaking glances at you, your hair falling behind you, the wrinkles in your forehead that only exist when you’re concentrating, the way your eyelids hide your gaze like a layer of snow hides the grass outside.

As beautiful as you are like this, thoughtful and intense, and god(dess) knows I’ve always liked intelligent women, as beautiful as you are while you write or think, I want you to close the computer screen and turn your eyes to me. I don’t want to see your solitary eyes, or your public laughing eyes. I want to see your fairy eyes, the way they glow in the dark of my room at night, a tourmaline green around the large pupils, then warmest bronze, and edges the dark brown of wet earth, just as alive. Your eyes are a forest I could lose myself in, a dangerous place, full of magic, bearing the essence of the rainbow, the whole rainbow transmuted in you to a pale green, a subtle red in your lips, and so much white, the white of your skin beneath my dark fingernails, the way you light the air above me, white, the presence of all colors at once.

A poem about last night (fictionalized, of course)

First Date

I took you to the Taj Mahal.
It was November in Ohio,
dark by dinner time, damp
biting cold as we walked
from the car. The air inside
was warm and fragrant. I caught
your smell as you removed
your coat, wanted to breathe in
against your neck beneath
the unruly cloud of long dark hair.

We drank sweet spiced tea softened
with milk, shared pakora and naan,
channa saag and aloo gobhi
and tender aromatic rice. It was all new
to you, the spices and textures, my hand
on your knee as we sipped tea
and talked after the meal. I caught
your reflection in the gilt-edged mirror
across the room, pale face framed
by dark silk curtains, gold bells.

I wanted to take you everywhere
in that moment, place your beauty
securely in my world. I wanted
to hide you inside, away from cold
and judgment. We ordered kheer,
thin rice pudding with pistachios
and cardamom. The waiter, a dark
beautiful boy with wavy hair to his collar,
brought our dessert, one bowl, two heavy
spoons touching, nestled comfortably
on a creamy white, gold-stamped saucer.

on the blessings i don't believe in

on the blessings i don't believe in

i stopped believing long ago
that we are punished
or rewarded
by a willful old man in the sky

i will take my chances
with karma or luck
do good works for their own sake
accept failure as the result
of my failings

how to explain now
just how blessed i feel
by a week's worth of sun,
a vote that finally went right
the sweetest lips
against my own

the universe is smiling
on me brilliantly
and steadily
with the warmest
november this state
has ever seen

what have i done to earn
all of this? and what
must i do to keep it?

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.

Untitled for now

Your cat left scratches on my hand last night,
tiny red lines beneath the skin, dried blood
across my knuckles. It barely hurt, and I know
they will heal. I wonder if you'll still be here

or if the sting and thrill of a new love will fade
along with the marks on my skin, like every other love
fades away, scarring over, disappearing
into the geography of lines on my hands,

the creases that grow with age, the healed wounds,
the lovers that have been here before.

Water and Copper

This is not a sex poem, although that was our "assignment".... Fred Andrle read a poem last night about wells, and our table at Larry's was sort of brainstorming what the word "well" makes us think of, and I started writing a poem about that during the reading but didn't really finish it or love it. Today, I was going to write a sex poem, and I was thinking of kissing someone in the rain years and years ago, a moment I'd forgotten till reading an old journal reminded me of it, and I'd been writing yesterday in my LJ about being afraid of getting what I want, and I just sort of put all that together and came up with this.

Water and Copper

I dreamt of wells last night
of cool stone at my back
rain falling on bare shoulders
as we kissed under the moon.

I dreamt pennies falling
from my child's sweaty palm
splashing far below, the darkness
and the mystery of wishes.

I dreamt of getting what I want,
my hands on your skin,
lips to your cheek, your lips,
your throat. I woke

afraid that I was trapped
in the well, that I would fall in
after my pennies and tumble out
of sight, that I'd really kissed you.

This is the dark side of wishes:
I have the power
to make them all come true.

A bit of a poem

which is very "current", shall we say? It's just sort of off the cuff this afternoon, and maybe a little too true...... Or maybe not.

Untitled for now

There are blessings that look
so much like curses – storms
that knock out the power
and transport you back
to candles and cookfires
and nothing to do at night
but talk, running late
the day there’s an accident,
the funeral that reunites
a family, and, maybe, this.

A message, filtered
through layers of twenty-first
century reality, appearing
on a screen, from a man
you never could say no to,
now, when you’ve said no
to men for four years.


In grad school news - I printed off ten transcript request forms today. Yes, I think I'm pruning my list a bit, but I can always print more if I decide to hit all 12 schools on my list after all.