A Selection of Random Links

After Wednesday's blackout, it appears the interwebs are buzzing with interesting stories this morning. Or perhaps I should credit my friends' Friday procrastination instead; I've found all of these posted by my facebook and/or twitter colleagues. Regardless, because I've come across such a diverse array of interesting things this morning, I don't have a coherent idea to post about; instead, you get a smidgen of many different ideas.

So, in no particular order, I offer you:

A proposal to eliminate university tuition -- With all the crazy shit that's happened at the UC schools recently, this is actually positive information. From the article, "On Wednesday, a group of students at UC Riverside presented a proposal to UC President Mark Yudof that would abolish tuition - and he’s actually considering it." The best thing about it, at least from this short article, is that the plan actually makes sense.

An indicator that I truly am old -- Nothing says "you're not a kid anymore" like the news that your favorite childhood movie is being remade. And now, The Princess Bride is the victim. I'll grant that this cast/director could be a lot worse, but still, they're messing with perfection and I am not pleased.

Comedy, satire, and politics -- and the hazy borders between them. Some of my former Penn State colleagues and I recently had a long, involved discussion on facebook about Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart and political satire. It started with this article, and then this one, which I'd read a few days before, and the link I started with addresses some of the issues we'd been discussing. I will say that I'm not 100% sold on Colbert in many ways, that I prefer Stewart's approach; but I also acknowledge that Colbert's recent "long-form journalism" (as this article calls it) re: campaign finance, super PACs, etc is pretty effective in showing a non-expert audience exactly how fucked up the system is.

Another serious-comic piece -- which I relate to all too well. Maybe cracked.com is running out of ideas, but this one on "The 5 Stupidest Habits You Develop Growing Up Poor" is really on-point. I've had this conversation with a couple of friends of mine, one of whom grew up with less than I did (and I grew up firmly working class, if not "poor" exactly) and the other who grew up in a privileged suburb; the insidious effects of poverty are easy to under-estimate, especially for people who've never been there as well as those who've gotten past that income level. This piece, which is humorous in many places, does a great job of explaining some of them.

And a bit of bad news from India -- I adore Salman Rushdie. I first read him in high school, and my mother disapproved. I've read nearly all his books. I even used a quote from one of his essays as an epigraph for my MFA thesis. I follow him on Twitter. And I find it so ridiculous, and sad, that his life is still being threatened. This article is interesting as well in its discussion of literary festivals, and the question of what happens when these events (or any events) grow too big too fast. It also makes me both sad and relieved to be missing the AWP festival next month.

And I believe that's it for today. I need to get off the couch, run some errands, clean my apartment, and get ready to meet up with friends this evening where I get to hear about L's trip to Costa Rica. Yay! Have I mentioned how much I love my life?

Afterthought: in an effort to not be too "cheery," I'll also give you this morning's small stone:

the furnace works
for two solid hours
warming the morning rooms
enough to move
I don't get up until I can feel my nose

perfect (from this weekend)

(I wasn't online at home at the time I wrote this, Saturday afternoon, but thought I'd post it now)

it’s raining today, a steady, cooling, soaking rain, with some light thunder, the day after I noticed how low the river was and how sad the mudflats looked in the center of it. I felt a little guilty for wanting nothing but sunshine this summer, and now we’re getting rain on a day when I had no outdoor activities at all planned. again, it is perfect. perfect, perfect, perfect. overwhelmingly so, and scarily so, and I just want to live up to it all.

Minnesota as Punishment for the Sin of Pride

Last week's Read Write Poem prompt involved a form called the bop, which is, as I understand it, sort of a modern sonnet-esque type of thing: 6 line stanza to set up, 2 line refrain, 8 line stanza adding to the first, repeat of 2 line refrain, then 6 line stanza to wrap up or twist or confound or otherwise resolve the first two, then another repeat of the 2 line refrain. The prompt involved everyone posting two lines, and then each poet choosing another persons refrain and writing a poem around that. There was a really cool set of line about vultures... I loved the lines, but couldn't make them into anything. I had the thought of driving an empty landscape, with vultures, in my head, and also my snowy drive back from Cleveland last weekend. Then was talking about the weather in Minnesota this morning, the possibility of me being able to handle grad school out there. So that's what went into this, I guess.....

Minnesota as Punishment for the Sin of Pride

The old man who rings up my coffee
and gas tells me to be careful on the highway
west. It’s windy as sin out there, he says,
and I know he would have used a different word
if I’d been a local. I smile, say I will,
I’m from Ohio and no stranger to winter.

I drive farther west than I’ve ever been.
The land is flat, the snow blown thin.

I’m no stranger to winter, but this
is ridiculous, my gloved fingers numb,
car buffeted and blind. Snow dervishes
beside the highway frantically praising
this great and unpredictable force
till the wind moves on and white robes
settle hollowly to earth and pavement,
all their passion blown across the prairie.

I drive farther west than I’ve ever been.
The land is flat, my soul blown thin.

Passion has blown me out here to the prairie,
my weight insufficient anchor against the wind,
my coat and blood too thin. There is no sun here,
no color but old snow, salt-bleached asphalt,
and frozen stubble in the fields. My red car
is brilliant in this landscape, my smallness immense.

I am farther west than I’ve ever been.
I fear the flattening, the blowing thin.

A Poem for Jade, Upon My Acceptance to Graduate School

Here is the poem I mentioned that I wrote last night.

A Poem for Jade, Upon My Acceptance to Graduate School

Windows rattle with a suddenness
that startles the cat from the back
of the couch. She glares green-eyed
at me as though I called this wind.

Maybe I did. There was news today,
good news, the future I’ve been chasing
is now marked boldly on the calendar.
The wind batters this apartment, but we
have weathered worse and I trust these walls.

In six months I will not know the strength
of the glass and brick surrounding me,
if walls will leak or break or bend.
The cat will be with me, ready
to place blame where it is due.

The Difference

Since Nathan mentioned the poem prompt I gave on his blog, I figured I'd go ahead and post what I wrote that night as well. The prompt was to write on either the difference between the purchase and the gift, or just on the idea of purchases or gifts. A nice wide-open prompt, but one which had a very specific point of origin for me.

Awhile back, in the summer of 2007 I think, I read a book of essays by Scott Russell Sanders called Hunting for Hope. It's a great book, about family relationships, and our relationship to the natural world, and ways of finding hope in a world that's so messed up. He writes at one point about the difference between the purchase and the gift, with the idea that nature is a gift to us: it is something we can not buy, can not write, can not choose, can not control. We must be passive and just listen. (okay, cutting this short cuz S. just walked in, and we need to work on the collaborative piece.) Go check out the book!

The Difference

Open windows in summer are a gift,
the breeze that comes unbidden,
uneven, on its own terms.
You must wait for it, not command

an on/off switch, set a comfortable
seventy degrees, low speed or high.
There is no purchase, no control,
no ceiling fan, no central air.

All weather is a gift, cold
or hot, dry or wet, kind
or cruel. Your smallness
is a gift, humbled in the wind.

You purchase the roof that shelters,
the umbrella, the fur-lined gloves.
I walk bare-headed in the rain, I wait
for sunshine, for calm, for love.

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.

"There Are No Bad Fridays"

Another oldie... Originally workshopped that same semester, but it started the semester before, fall of 1999, when Shannon died. She wasn't my cousin, or even an extremely close friend. She was just this girl I'd known since 2nd grade through church and private school. Her brother was one of my "boyfriends" in second grade; he and Brian used to fight over me on the playground. Brian died in a car accident when we were seniors in high school. I didn't go to his funeral. It's more complicated than that, but when Shannon died four years later, it through my world for a loop. I scribbled a few lines of this the weekend of the funeral, didn't complete it till months later, then added/changed a lot during that workshop the next semester. When I dusted it off again recently, I made some more drastic changes.

“There Are No Bad Fridays”

the man on the radio says, but I disagree
today as I drive through sheets of rain
toward my cousin’s funeral. She was nineteen,
her boyfriend was behind the wheel. He lies
in a hospital bed, stable, in pain. I was almost
afraid this morning to get in the car.

The radio plays on, a constant drone
of scripted words and recycled songs
blurring into a noise as nearly white
as the sky. I should be remembering her,
at holidays and parties, as a child
and a teenager, and a woman just starting
to grown into her beauty, but the radio
recalls last night’s conversations,
and the later kisses, and thoughts
flow through my mind as quickly,
as pointlessly, as the sound. I shake
my head to clear it and focus
instead on the rain.

This is a bad Friday, I think,
annoyed with the voice which said
everything is fine, and I glare
at the spray flung onto the windshield
by the truck in front of me. I realize
I am tense, that I keep tightening
until I am squeezing the wheel
with both hands, hunched over,
an old woman at twenty-six, straining
to see. I make an effort to relax,
uncoiling, pressing shoulders back
against the seat, and I try to look
beyond the tail lights in front of me.
Rain falls in waves, rolling down
the glass, splashing off. We are,
all of us, back in the womb on this highway,
securely wrapped in glimmering cars
while water holds us separate
from the outside world.

All I can see is the color of rain,
the pale grey fabric of clouds unbroken
by sky, and I know the weather won’t change
today. I feel the truth of the falling sky
as I navigate the slick pavement
that glows in my headlights. The truth
is that the radio tells lies, the leaves
change color and die, the rain
always falls downward, and all
we can hope for is to grow old someday.

After the Storm

The remnants of Hurrican Ike came through Central Ohio yesterday. It's quite a mess, but I feel very lucky to be here and not on the coast where it caused more serious damage. We got no rain, just wind gusts of up to 75 miles an hour. Trees, branches, chimneys, power lines, etc down all over the place. Over 260,000 people without power. I worked yesterday until 5:00; the worst of the wind came through between 4 and 5, I think, but it was still insane walking home. My skin was coated in dirt and debris by the time I'd walked six blocks. I had to cross to the opposite side of the street twice because there were power lines down on the sidewalk. Everyone was sitting on porches calling out greetings and warnings to the people walking by; a little old man told me to go home, I said I was on my way.

Amazingly, my building never lost power. I'd left windows open, and the wind had slammed doors shut and blown papers around and scared poor Lucky. He met me at the door with his tail all uncurled and a very unhappy look on his face, but everything was intact, and we walked out to make sure nothing had fallen on my car, and it too was fine. One of the trees out front is split into three pieces, one standing upright, one fallen toward the sidewalk, one fallen backward onto the brick privacy wall we used to climb last summer.

I was getting ready for work this morning when I got a call from one of my bosses. Our office has no power, so I got to stay home. I took Lucky for a long walk and surveyed the mess in the neighborhood, then I came up to Cup o' Joe, and am going to try to get some work done on grad school applications. I think I came up with a third recommender this weekend; I'll have to ask her, but I think it'll work. She's a client of mine now, and although she doesn't know my writing, she is an English professor, and she can speak about my personality and work ethic and my current self; my other recommenders are college professors from my undergrad, so that's been quite awhile.

Fulfillment

one of those aforementioned poems i've written recently. this one (all of them actually) i wrote out long-hand first, in my little green journal, then typed up, so they aren't quite first drafts because i edit slightly as i type. this one i also just changed a few words while waiting for my wireless to connect.

Fulfillment

Have you ever wanted so badly
to stand alone in the dark, stretch
wide your arms and call the rain?

You don’t believe it’s possible
but on a dark night like this
with a cold summer breeze

when all you are is a question
and the stars look down
their daggers and you wait

for something without knowing what
you want to believe, you wish
you still had some faith.

You don’t know how to cast a circle
or speak the language of the wind.
All you hear is the emptiness

swirling dry leaves around your feet
speaking of space and time,
endless motion without matter,

the desire of flesh to join
with spirit. Call. Silence to silence,
emptiness to emptiness, anything

to something, and the answer
will come, with a breath, a cloud
curtaining the moon, a gather

of darkness sheer as silk.
Wait. Stand still, close your eyes,
and wait. The rain will come.

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.

A Storm Poem

great thunderstorm last night....

A great dark cloud has covered this city,
moving in slowly from the southwest
a heaviness preceding the storm. The first
rumbling discontents arrived around 5:00,
a slow leeching of the sunlight
a rising breeze
a transparent gauze
instead of air.

Inside, on the third floor of my heart,
I wait for it. I listen carefully,
counting the seconds between
each beautiful flash and its following crash.
They get closer together each time
until I no longer can tell the difference
between beauty and pain.

The windows are all open to the south,
the wind blows in gusts, panting
with the effort. It begins to rain,
and I sit on my couch
and let it soak me.

When the storm finally passes by,
I will sift through what's left and make sense of it all.

Spring Storm

Sitting here watching the leaves flip themselves in the wind. That's all that's behind this. The story just appeared as I started writing.

Spring Storm

When the rustling leaves
Show their pale underbellies
I was told that means the rain
Is coming. They toss and turn

Like me in your bed, anxious
Without knowing why. The curtains
Drape your window, the city light
Seeping in no matter how late

We go to bed. I wish you would leave
Them open, enjoy the view,
Let the spring air freshen the room,
Caress our bodies as we lie

Side by side. You sleep
Soundly, soundlessly, politely
Curled away from my thrashing
Limbs. I want to touch you,

Press my breasts to your back,
Mold my body to yours in sleep,
But I am afraid to wake you.
Thunder rumbles outside, loud

Enough to penetrate the brick and glass
We’re protected by. I turn toward
The window, my back to yours,
Aware of your warmth but not

Close enough to disturb you. I wait
For the next sound, a rattle of rain
Striking the glass, then a flash, a crash,
And as it all falls down around us

I close my eyes and finally relax.

Long Street

Last week I drove downtown three nights in a row in the rain, and every night I sat at the intersection of Neil Ave and Long Street, waiting to turn left, and looked at the skyline through the rain. I was also reading Dangerous Angels last week, which is set in LA and very, very visual and California and magical. It's a book I love and re-read just for nostalgia's sake, and because I wanted something sweet and romantic and dark and light and magic and beautiful. But anyway, I got the idea in my head that the neon of the skyline reminded me of sunset in California, so that's where the poem came from. I don't know where it's going, but I realize I almost have a persona who's from California and is a visitor or a transplant here in Ohio. She's definitely not the same persona as the "I" who narrates my poems about childhood, which is interesting. Or maybe not interesting.

Long Street

The rhythmic swish-splash of wipers
On my rain-drenched windshield,
A damp flannel softness to the skyline
Above my head and to the left - I am sitting
At the longest red light in Columbus.

The shy shades from rainy grey
To the indigo of twilight, pink and red
And orange neons echo softly in the mist.
It looks like sunset in L.A., this brightness
That is artificial here. The light turns

Finally green. I turn left, head
East, turning my back again
On California. Somehow I will
Learn to love the rain.

On the Fourth Day It Rained

I came up with the title of this one while I was in San Diego, but didn't write it till a month or so later. Got some good suggestions on the first draft, made some edits, and read this at Larry's a month or so ago.


On the Fourth Day It Rained

I woke too early that Sunday in San Diego
Still not accustomed to West Coast time –
My body believing it was past ten
When my California friends thought they were sleeping in.

I made coffee in the high white kitchen,
Tore off an oval of last night’s bread and spooned
It with jam because I could not find a knife.

It was cloudy as I opened the sliding door
And allowed the cat to follow me onto the balcony –
A view of palm trees and pastel buildings
Clinging like lichen to the hills
That settle gradually down to the sandy shore.
We watched the rain move in, she and I,
Great banks of clouds drifting like ruffled skirts
From the ocean a few miles away.

I sipped my coffee, too hot, too strong,
And welcomed the chill that came with the misty rain.
Back home, in Ohio, this time of year
Is miserable. I have not grown used

To the sunny days, the temperance,
Wearing thin sweaters, pretty things
Too flimsy for February, the failure of weather to reflect
Reality – that this city with its beaches and its palm trees and
Its cleanliness and order and beautiful people
Is no better and no happier than where I came from.

The Coming Spring

The infamous 30 foot bear poem. Or one of them, at least. This is from February as mentioned in the poem, and it was written as a challenge. A group of us were out for S's birthday in January, and this friend of hers kept talking about how there used be to 30 foot bears. For some reason, we all found it very amusing, and S ended up challenging a bunch of people to write poems about 30 foot bears. This is mine.


The Coming Spring

If the slowly falling days of August
Are like a dog, all lethargy and lolling
Tongue, then these lengthening days
Of February are like a thirty foot bear
Hibernating to survive the cold, bristling
Claws and teeth and frozen fur. Adapted so well
To the ice age, those mountains who moved,
Impenetrable fortresses of fur and fangs,
The massive flow of blood keeping them warm
While they slept, a furnace humming in their breast.
Too big, too hot, the bears were to survive
A world growing warmer. These February days
Drudge on, each one longer and more unbearable,
Daylight dragging itself out, stretched thin
Over brittle bones, unwilling to fade and let us
Lock ourselves inside another night. The light
Sky compels me to action, but it is too cold to move.

We walk to dinner through a deluge of snow,
Flakes large as the dinner plates of fairies,
A shower that drenches our coats, legs, heads
With heavy wet flakes that would rather be rain.
The sidewalk is slick and I am tempted
To lose my footing on purpose to give you
An excuse to catch my arm. We both need it,
That excuse. I don’t slip. It is easier to keep
My own footing than trust you to catch me. I would
Have made a good bear, I think, self sufficient
And imposing, capable of sleeping through winter
And ignoring the storms around me. We stop
At the corner, I glance at you, blinking snowflakes
From my lashes, the streetlight haloing everything
With gold. The light changes and you offer me
Your arm as we step off the sidewalk. I don’t know
What to do.

Goodale Park After Three Weeks of Snow (February Sestina)

First poem :)

I read this on Monday night at Larry's, and I like it better after reading it aloud. It's funny how that happens sometimes; I'll have a poem I think is okay, then I'll read it aloud and realize I don't really like it, or I'll read it aloud and realize it's better than I'd thought.

This one started, in February, as a little three stanza poem in no recognizable form, but I realized that I was repeating a lot of words and using a sort of repeating structure, and that maybe it wanted to evolve into a formal poem. So it became a sestina. I am proud of actually finishing a formal piece like this, because I don't do them often, and there are parts of this that I really like a lot.

And I got a nice response from the Poetry Forum crowd on Monday. Or maybe that was just all the cheap wine.....


Goodale Park After Three Weeks of Snow (February Sestina)

It is nearly midnight and I am walking alone
Through what feels like silence but is not
Really silent – the rattle and whir of traffic still
Reaches here, even through a dense blanket
No longer clean but grey and yellow and the off-white
Of curdled milk or dead skin or the rock salt

They pour on the streets. For nearly a month, no amount of salt
Has been able to keep these paths clear, let alone
Reveal the grass and trees hidden beneath white –
Each time it starts to melt, the heavens decree we are not,
Even in this global-warming world, to shed the blanket
Of winter so soon. I stood completely still

When you walked away, feeling the air grow still
Around me, the wind die without drying the salt
On my cheeks. The snow fell like a too thick blanket
On my shoulders and my head and I walked alone
Back home. Tonight the air is thick and dense, knotted
With snowflakes, the wind drawing lines of white

Across the path. I think of last summer when we wore white
Skirts and old sandals and lay together in the still
Hot air, too warm and easy to move. It did not
Seem possible that we’d ever be cold or sad, the salt
On our skin be anything other than sweat. Alone
I turn my back on the park and its dirty blanket

Of snow, alone I enter my apartment, my bed, pull up the blankets
And sleep. I dream you are here with me, feel your white
Legs beside mine, your hair tangled, body covered, one lone
Hand flexing in your dreams. I snuggle against you, then wake, still
Thinking you’re here. My arm curls around what I think is your waist, then, assaulted
With the realization that it’s a pillow, I stop. This is not

How I wanted to be, alone and illusioned. This is not
How winter should be, layer upon layer of filthy blanketing
Snow, all of my shoes stained with salt,
nothing but weariness and empty expanses of dirty white
snow and sheets I refuse to wash because they still
hold your scent, faintly and fading, leaving me alone

to wash away the salt, to learn again to be alone,
to put the blankets away, expose my white
skin to the sun, not to fear, to let my heart be still.