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.

First post from PA

Well, I’m here. I moved in on Saturday with the help of my wonderful moving posse. They left on Sunday afternoon, and I started unpacking. Sunday and most of Monday were spent unpacking and organizing. I checked out the grocery store and the Goodwill Monday afternoon and went for my first run in this new neighborhood. At first it felt a bit like running in Dublin did, past the apartment complexes and the cul-de-sacs, but then I turned up Whitehall Road, and it suddenly felt like southern Ohio: I was running beside a black-topped road, with fields sloping down to my left, hills rising softly through the humid air, passing separate houses with gardens and fruit trees and falling-down barns. It was lovely and homey.

My roommate arrived on Tuesday. I must say it is odd to have a roommate again. I am old and set in my single ways, so having someone else in the apartment just seems strange. She is nice though, and seems really laidback, and I am sure we’ll get along fine.

I still have not done anything all that constructive, in terms of going to campus and getting my id or my books or anything, but that can wait I guess. I am desperately poor right now, and trying to hang in there. I did however, on the topic of constructiveness, write a poem on Monday while sitting on my balcony.

Pennsylvania Morning #1

Walking my dog this first morning
we follow a path behind the building
bordered by an overgrown tree line -
maples and elms, a dark-leafed shrubby thing
I can’t identify, and plenty of weeds.
I recognize many of these plants from Ohio,
Queen Anne’s Lace, tall purple thistles
that punctuate the verge with danger,
wild grape vines with pointed leaves
and dusty curling tendrils, and the yellow tongues
of touch-me-not that nevertheless invite
my touch. I remember the blossoms as orange
when my mother took me hiking
on the Cleveland Metropark trails
she’d known as a girl and taught me
how they work and why; I wonder if
these are a different species or if
my memory is wrong, but the striated
green pods are swollen just the same,
and when I close my finger and thumb
around the largest it bursts just like
I knew it would. The pod splits,
its sides curl open like streamers,
the inside is white, the seeds fly free.

Also, I am now participating in a collaborative blog called The MFA Chronicles; all the contributors are starting MFA programs this fall and we’ll be comparing notes and sharing our experiences with each other and with readers. If you’re interested in the MFA process, check it out. So far I have posted an introduction and a long post about how I chose the programs to which I applied and how I ended up at Penn State. Feel free to give them a read if you want, but I’ll probably cross-post a lot of things here, if I think they’d be of general interest.

Simplify

Within the space of less than a week, I have gone televisionless and carless. I think I like it. I will definitely do more walking, and more reading, and hopefully more writing as well.

I also started reading the poems in Late Wife by Claudia Emerson last night, and I love them. And started reading James Wright's letters in A Wild Perfection. Good stuff, good stuff! Just thinking about how I will never get past being a country girl. No matter how long I live in cities or how much I appreciate them, there is part of me that will always recognize and attach to the seasons and what they mean to the land and to those who farm it.

Finally caught up

I couldn't come up with a good poem for Friday's prompt (which was to write a poem about Fridays - blah, sorry, dude, but that was a sucky prompt), then my internet was not working at home and I didn't go to work yesterday so I had to catch up with several days' worth of poems today, but I did it. I am now caught up. 14 poems in 14 days. Almost halfway there.

I ended up just doing a silly little haiku for the Friday prompt. Saturday's was to write about an object, and I wrote the following little piece because I've been shopping obsessively for shoes recently:

New Shoes

In the store, you are temptation,
possibility, elusive beauty,
impossible comfort. You are
quarry, I stalk you across town
through a maze of aisles.
When I find you, I am the hunter
victorious. In my closet
you are guilt, disappointment,
blisters and an empty wallet.

Sunday's prompt was to write a poem titled "So we decided to...." Mine was "So We Decided To Get Coffee", but it didn't turn out that great. Monday's prompt was to write about a hobby, and I used a poem I've been wanting to write this month about running. It's a prose poem, and I really really like it. Here's the beginning; it's about running on Easter morning (hence the title):

Easter 2009

The morning is all green and white and the dark wet brown of tree bark and mulch, drenched and glistening like kittens just born, sexless, blind, licked clean and new by an exhausted mother cat, each tiny mouth finding a nipple. There is no consciousness to this impulse.

It goes on from there. I actually have a long-standing habit of writing poems on or about Easter. The images of death and resurrection are potent for me and resonate in different ways at different times, and there is always the pull of religion or my fight against it, plus this is a time of year that always inspires me. I actually like that piece a lot. Today's prompt was either to write a love poem or an anti-love poem. Mine is kind of both, and it's not that good, so not posting it either.

A Robin Speaks on Global Warming

Today's prompt was to write an outsider poem. This came from a story on NPR about how global warming has changed the migratory patterns of birds and other animals. It's kind of heavy-handed and tree-hugger-ish.

A Robin Speaks on Global Warming

It was warm in the wintering lands,
sun had melted the snow, green
burst from the tips of every tree, through
the dark soil, the first tiny flowers
were smiling, telling us to go home.

We flew north. Wind, clouds, snow
in the air. The spring mating grounds
are still snow-covered. There is nothing
to eat. We scratch through snow,
scavenge for shriveled berries. We
build nests, huddle together and wait
for warmth while we curse those
who've changed the rules we've followed
since our ancestors first sprouted feathers
and made their way to these mountains
in the springtime of a cooler planet.

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?

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.

View from the Kitchen Window after Four Years of War

this is a poem that started a very long time ago, in my first college cw class, i think. it's gone through several revisions since.

View from the Kitchen Window after Four Years of War

I turn off the television, tired
of watching the same news every day.
I need a drink of water, go to the sink,
brush the faded curtain aside and stare out
through the screen ---

Cubed green hills as brilliant in the sun
as any pigment in a box of crayons,
cornstalks waving slowly
in a too warm wind, the grid overlapping
all, like attack plans on graph paper,
perfection simplified, a patriotic dream,
a child’s game in rural America.
Cows dot the fields like fallen toy soldiers,
the leaves ruffled by the breeze
could be flags. It is a history book
battlefield, dramatic, glorious.

I bring my face closer to the screen
to look through the square cages of wire,
knowing that the world isn’t neatly broken
into perfect cubes, that war is not noble,
and that dust coats the rusted screens
of seldom washed farm house windows.

Grasshopper

from my drive home from work....

I didn’t see it when I put the car in reverse,
backed carefully as always out of the parking lot,
didn’t see it when I shifted to drive and accelerated
gradually down the street. It appeared
from nowhere – a blank windshield one moment
and the next a brazen summer grasshopper.

It walked unsteadily up the glass slope
until it was just above eye level, then turned
like a dog circling before lying down and faced into the wind
long antennas blowing backward, like it enjoyed
the breeze. I wondered what 30 miles per hour
must feel like to a creature only an inch long.

Like a hurricane, I guessed, all but overwhelming,
but it hung on, antennas flying, body buffeted,
six tiny feet gripping the smooth surface
until I stopped at a traffic light. I thought about reaching out
my hand, trying to scoop it off the glass and into the grass
beside the road, but it turned and walked sideways
further up the windshield.

Green like the light, not one of the brown grasshoppers of fall,
the kind that sting against your legs when you run,
dry and hard and eating holes in the crops, it was pale
and the color of new leaves. It sidled up the glass
and then hopped out of sight onto the roof of the car.
I missed it immediately, wished it luck, that strange passenger
on my short urban commute. May you find the green grass
by the river, the tall weeds, disturbed only by bicycles and runners,
not the dirty exhaust-dried borders of this road.

Minutes later I parked the car at home, got out and slammed the door
without thinking, making it jump, that spindly-legged miracle
that had survived my driving. I tried to apologize
for the bumpy ride, but it skittered away from my voice.
I’d been used by the little green insect. It got what it wanted
and didn’t want to talk afterward. It’s been fun, it might have said,
but let’s not make this more than what it is.

The High Points

per my rambling thoughts earlier.....

The High Points

Light strikes the high points
reflecting white and green
angling down to the valleys
filtered and fractured and true.

This is where life happens:
on the forest floor, the moss
soft and cool, the tiny darting creatures
oblivious to all but the next meal
or threat, clearings heated and brilliant,
rocks just right for basking in the sun.

The high points are too rare,
exposed as they are, nothing
can live long that close to the edge
of the atmosphere.

July 1988

long, probably rambling, too prosey perhaps....

July 1988

Those blasphemous raspberries resolutely refused
to ripen during the bright clear days of June,
color rich and glossy but tart enough
to keep even the youngest of us from eating them.

Every day my mother sent us up the hill
to check on them. We’d try a few, competing
to find the largest, the darkest, the highest, hoping
to find one sweet, return defeated and scratched
with that sour still-green taste in our mouths.

We watched the sky for rain because she did,
eyes darting west at every little breeze, watched
the garden dry and crack, plants yellow and droop.
Every evening when the sun went down, we filled
five gallon buckets in the stream, as full as we could
carry, my sister and I sharing one bucket,
my mother with one and a baby on her hip,
my father a bucket in each hand, a scowl on his face.

We poured water carefully, focusing on the roots
not the leaves, trying to save the rows of corn,
the hills of potatoes, squash, beans, the sad spindly
tomatoes and peppers. The garden seemed endless
in those dry, rapidly cooling twilights, no humidity
to hold the day’s heat, spilled water quickly evaporating
from our hands and legs. It should have been enough
to feed all of us with plenty left over to sell
and freeze and can and keep for winter.

When it rained on the 4th of July, we ran outside barefoot
to play in the muddy water that filled the yard
too much for the dense clay to absorb so it splashed
around our legs, scooped up by hands too young
to be grateful, watched by eyes too young to be desperate.

The rain didn’t stop.

She forgot about the raspberries, worried now
about flooding, drowning the plants in the garden,
water in the basement and mold and mildew. I woke
on the 7th, the first day of sun, everything in rainbows
and mud puddles. The overflowed stream had stopped
just shy of disaster, the corn in the garden stood tall
and truly green, bees reappeared, buzzing heavily
between the purple blossoms of beans. I climbed the hill,
my sister in tow, carrying one small metal bucket.

The raspberries hung from their pale thorny vines
plump and beaded with dew and rain. I reached for one
and it fell apart in my hand, juice staining like wine,
tried another and it too dissolved. A smell rose
from the crushed berries, too sweet, too soft. We turned
guiltily, humbled by those blasphemous berries
we’d forgotten for a few days, long enough to miss
our chance. She wouldn’t blame us, we knew, but we would
blame ourselves as we'd been taught for not braving
the rain to pick berries before they rotted, for not remembering
what we’d spent the past weeks looking for, for not
picking them sour and adding sugar, for not outsmarting nature.

The Art of Making Possible

The title comes from this article I just read. I'm not sure of the my exact thoughts about the article, and though the poem started out in that context, it doesn't really end up there, or not only there.

The Art of Making Possible

But what if
It’s not? What if
We will choose
Rhetoric over reality
Again? What if
Gravity always wins
Eventually, brings
Us back to earth?

Why keep trying
To fly? Are you
Still trying to win?

We have forced
Metal and circuitry
To do our bidding,
To carry us through
The sky and out
Into space. We can
Pretend to fly.

It’s the journey,
Isn’t it, not the arrival?
Our lives shine en route
To death, and there is
No reason to hide them
Under bushels, even
If the enemy has spies.

Let us take our lesson
From the stars. Shine
As brightly as is in us
To shine, patiently,
Constantly, through the days
When no one sees
And the nights when we
Are worshipped, shine
Until we’ve given
Our heat and our mass
To the universe and we
Quietly, uncomplainingly,
Burn ourselves out.

Disc

Per my previous post, I walked up to the park with Lucky and worked on this poem. There was an event at the shelter house so tons of people around, so Lucky wouldn't settle down. He eventually hopped up on top of the picnic table where I was writing and proceeded to walk all over my notebook and my bag and knock over my water bottle several times. I finished a quick draft and then we walked around for awhile. Lovely sunny day, though not as warm as it was in April. That's okay though; it will get warmer from here.

So, first draft of a poem I've been mulling over since driving back from Louisville and seeing a farmer discing a field.

Disc

Not the smooth rounded
Discus, ancient measure of prowess,
Death blow of the most beautiful
Boy – was it an accident or the result
Of wind’s jealous gust?

I mean the giant metal corkscrew
Disc joined to disc
Pulled by a rusted green
Tractor over 14.2 acres
Of tough barely arable land.

Blades rose from the dense earth
Cutting path overlapping path,
Tide-like rise and fall, spiral
Of our galaxy, over and over,
Behind the bare sunburned back
Of my father and the sweet
Dirty cloud of John Deere exhaust.

At rest, in the twilight, the disc
Lay like a skeleton, clay clinging
To each blade, bloody in the last bright
Rays. In the morning it will be dry,
Ready to flake away like the soul
Leaving the desiccated body
Of an old man in his faded
White farmhouse. In a few months
The earth, her blood spilled each spring,
Mixed with our human sweat like the god’s
Tears, and rain, and that jealous unrepentant
Wind, will yield corn, will yield if
We are lucky, beauty enough and profit
Enough to get us through the winter.