When you're dead

I.
I will smile on my pillow in the morning
because in winter it's still dark this early
& I don't have to share it with anyone.

II.
I broke a cup, one of the green set,
the green I might see in a pool.

III.
I've given up looking at anything. My eyes
are voluntarily blind, milked over, staring at empty space
all day. I've learned only the bedroom
and bathroom by touch and even the light switch
is heavy.

IV.
I went to the counter to pay and I had nothing
not even my wallet, just bread crumbs in my purse
left over from a stash of pumpkin bread. The cinnamon
stung my eyes.

V.
You need to break free—this binary view of images
is suffocating. I stare at the line tying the raft to shore
and am too frightened to untie the knot—so the boat rocks
so do I.

VI.
It was ten years ago but I'm not thinking. It is as if
I've found time travel with this rage—like I can feel
all the pain that was, that is and will be.

A Lesson from the Moon

A car turns near
a lighted tree. The blue light reflected
by the windshield, by the rainwater left
at its edges. An eon-second
of awe and as the car turns away
I realize why lampposts have panes of glass
that fog and mist—
  that light is more beautiful refracted
its implication, that soft hush glow
is what we love,
  we prefer light caught
hidden. Not bare, like the broken bulb,
the naked burning filament
staring over you at a table
in a small windowless room.

Craven. (prose poem?)

I feel nailed, hammered in. Craven. I do not know the dictionary definition of the word but it's the word I want to describe the pain I feel when a sob causes my shoulders to pinch in, makes my chest concave with the blow of dismissal. Craven. Probably the wrong word.

I wrote a letter to Bill Clinton when I was in the fourth grade. He wrote back, with his rubber-stamped signature. My mother had the letter laminated. I didn't know it; I thought it was a plastic pocket for the letter, so I could still take it out and touch the fancy paper. I peeled apart the plastic, thinking it was like a zip-lock bag, but the paper adhered and split in two revealing a chasm of dry, tree pulp. I'd ruined it. I yelled at my mother. She blamed my ignorance.

I felt spite toward her, toward "You don't know." I think it's because I did know, I knew what I'd done to the letter, rent it in it's mangled laminate package. I knew what that felt like. I knew I'd wanted a frame, the possibility of exit from the slim place between two panes of glass, anything but stagnant.

First (second draft)

This is a second draft of a poem that was originally in a sequence.

First



In the hot tub everyone was nearly naked, my skin
screaming pink from the steam, heat. The snow just starting
to fall so we threw each other
in and out of the bubbling water, yelling
from the shock of cold—
hot, then cold. White flakes dusted her black hair,
in every part of its braid,
in her long long lashes.

They dared us to kiss. They chanted, fists splashing
to the rhythm—Do it, do it, do it. Wincing,
my white fingers on her brown neck I slid my tongue
into her vacant mouth.
She wouldn't close her eyes—she stiffened.

I'm sorry. We toweled off,
silent except for the laughter in the next room
and the cotton dragging against her skin and water
drying. Her braid trailed her turned face
reminded me of a dash in a sentence.

Her mouth moved on its own this time,
but I only heard, First.

Untitled. For now, Sleep.

He's asleep, his mouth wide with the fury of an idiot. Dulled
by the chemical soup of sleep, the muscles in his face lax
lacking any tension, no winks or twitches--stasis
except his roving eyes, which wander over the inside of his eyelids.
His long lashes closed together like a Venus fly trap.

His lungs pull the air into his gaping mouth, I watch.
I could say anything in his ear
my hand a fetter to his wrist
still
bound.

Untitled. For now, The Bees.

The bees were gassed out of their hive.
They used to live in the outer wall of our apartment,
the one with the big window
that opened like a sore on our living room.

They fell onto our carpet, struggling in the haze
of chemical confusion. Every twitch
blurred by dying cells.

He scooped their little carcasses off the carpet
and threw them into the trash. Their wings
and exoskeleton must have scraped
the plastic trash bag

and though they did not intend it,
this sound said hush.

Parchment, new poem

Parchment

There were three of them, boys,
and while I was laying on top of a wide wall
where couples kissed, ditched school

one of them sat on my chest, and I laughed
tried to push him but I had no hands—

he pulled down my shirt and with a permanent
fine-tip pen he wrote on my chest, even
on the skin stretched right over my ribs, as if
he was etching into glass.

To expand my chest with breath was to push
against the sharp tip; to writhe
was to have him press harder, to ensure his writing
clear.

What did he write? WORDS, WORDS, WORDS.
It was summer and I had no sweatshirt
to cover them. My mother asked
what was all over me as I walked to the shower.

Scintilla

Scintilla


There is a service lamp hanging
from the hook in the hood of his Chevy truck
and they, man and woman, are half-seated
on his fender

talking in the lamp-light, like two exposed
and frayed wires, about to touch.

Graduating, and what it means for my poetry

I will be graduating from my undergraduate institution this Friday, May 9, 2009. Most people who write outside of an academic setting, or who have been outside an academic setting for a time, may not realize the huge implications this can have for me as a writer.

Here at Albion College I've been able to sign up for workshops in poetry and non-fiction, and taken an honors poetry class. It is also a small school here, so I know, and have known, most of the other poets/authors for almost 4 years. This means that when we give each other feedback, it is as colleagues, good friends. When I graduate, this resource won't be as readily available. Sure, I have a blog they could view and leave comments on, and there is email, but this is not the same as showing up in a physical space together for a few hours every week.

I have also had the wonderful opportunity to work on a thesis here at Albion. I met with my advisor and another reader every week to discuss my poetry and the collection as a whole. I won't have the luxury of having a professor who has known me or 3 years give me feedback on my poetry on a regular basis.

When working toward a thesis I was able to take class credit for it, which gave me time to write. I was able to take only 3 other classes both fall and spring semester when normally I would have been required to take 4, because I was taking credit for my thesis. This won't exist in graduate school, where I'm going to be pursuing an MSW.

This is not to say that writing will become more difficult now, so I'm going to give up. It just means I'll have to work harder to set aside time to write as well as find new workshop/feedback resources. I'll be living in Ann Arbor, which is a spoken word Capitol in the United States and I have connections to the poetry scene there. There are workshops I can sign up for that meet once a week that are laid back. I can also work to keep in touch with my fellow Albion graduates and we can continue to give each other feedback.

I think my main worry is not the work involved in making these changes, but the influence these changes will having on my writing. I will be in an entirely different environment and I hope that this has a positive impact on my writing, or at least, not a negative one.

Cartier Street Review Acceptance

Joy Leftow has informed me that "Pills" has been accepted for publication in The Cartier Street Review.

You can see a fellow Albion College poet, Stephanie Edwards, in the current (April) edition of The Cartier Street Review, http://thecartierstreetreview.blogspot.com/.

ETA: Joy Leftow contacted me later and after re-reading my submission decided to accept "Contained" for The Cartier Street Review.

The Smoking Book, online publication

Pieces I and Pieces II were accepted for online publication at The Smoking Book, you can check them out here:

http://thesmokingbook.blogspot.com/2009/04/pieces.html

I will hear back from Joy and Roxanne about whether I make the print edition in October.

At least I got something published, finally.

New Project: Tell Me of Kentucky

Now that my thesis is officially bound, and I've read at Elkin Isaac (a student symposium at Albion College where students share their research and creative works) I have yearned to write but felt lost without a larger project to work within.

I think I have figured out the next project. For Elkin Isaac I had my grandmother and Dr. Judy Lockyer meet for lunch (my mother and I were there, but we were kind of a sidebar). My grandmother loves talking about Kentucky, where she was born and grew up. She especially loves talking about it to people who know what she's talking about and as Judy is from Kentucky, she understood much of what my grandmother spoke about.

For my next project I'm going to interview my grandmother and other relatives about Kentucky. I'm also going to read about every author or book that I can that's about Kentucky or coal country. Then I'll write poems about what I hear. I think that this will be satisfying.

I will be posting first and early, working drafts in this blog. I'm sure updates will follow!

(As requested...V)

Asunder



I have a dream: I lose all my teeth, each one
a white tree stump freed from my gum.

I tell her my dream. It hurt, I say. She smiles,
places her palm in the small of my back and pushes.

I am delicate origami, a crane of green rice paper
and she gives me to the rain.

Impossible, she says. Water spreads across me,
soaks, dissolves my fibers. We cannot feel

pain in our dreams. I am paste on the sidewalk,
melting into the grit of concrete, ink streaming into the storm drain.

(As requested...IV)

The Dead



At my aunt's funeral, I was small and asked,
Mama, why is everyone crying?
This was more alarming than the black box,
than an unmoving body—the mass
of people distraught.

My mother re-speaks her sister’s words,
Always be good to Charlie.
And resolute, my mother invited ex-brother-in-law
to Christmas Eve dinners, to birthdays. He never
ate any turkey or drank any wine
out of a paper cup except once. He gave me,
the graduate, a card and having endured us,
he left without a word.

I cannot imagine him dribbling the basketball
as reported. His sweat dyed his shirt yellow. Did he
stop suddenly, drop the ball and allow his eyes
to grow as wide as the pain shivering in his veins?

When the doctor could not restore a pulse, he called
the mother and told her that her son's heart
had stopped squeezing.
In the nursing home,
she did not cry into the pillow,
over-starched and not her own.

You don't mess with the dead, my mother says.
We quietly sign the forms that arrived with the will
and do not look at each other.

(As requested...III)

Pills *



Familiar orange bottle, white top.
It lounges on the diner table. You regret
not pushing the pills into some other container.
Its orange almost shines, like beacons,

distress signals.

The color of caution signs.
Not a warning, Think twice before you swallow

Though you always do—Did I take them

already today? Did I take them already?

But warning someone else to think before speaking with you
What if she's infectious?

As consolation: think of autumn, of leaves

about to fall. They pity you for a fraction of a second
as they smile into their coffee, stirring
sugar and cream evenly.

The color of convict uniforms.
Always in a coat pocket, in a backpack, in a purse,

the dull rattle of pills in plastic with each step.

Ever-orange cylinder, dimensions predetermined

and mass produced.

A prisoner executed each day, swallowed,

buried in stomach acid
for the greater good.

(*when blockquoting, html adds italics, which are unintended here. When I have time later, I will appropriately represent the text).

(As requested...II)

(The one exception, these poems will be posted together, because they should be read together).
*

Pieces I



See yourself wrapped in soft paper tissue.
You are prepared to become ash,
to float into the sky in pieces.
Part of you may land in the open trap of a mouth,
rest on tongue, taut,
the only exposed muscle—free and writhing,
or lay in soil, in the shade of a tulip
to be fed upon by the green things
that grow toward the sun, that know no love.


∞


Every time I see a fire,
I know something has died.

*********************************************


Pieces II



Open a book and rip each page.
Take The Wild Iris from your white bookshelf.
Smoke “Witchgrass.” Burn the poem
into your soft throat as you inhale,
brand the silk cord of your trachea.
Unfold “Lady Lazarus” and eat it line by line.
Every inner wall must be painted black
with famous words, with words.
Eat until acid fills your mouth, until you cough ink.


∞


Every time I read a poem,
I know something has died.

As requested...

Someone gave me a very complimentary message on Facebook, asking for a copy of the poems I read aloud at a poetry reading at Albion College. If I were famous, I would just sell copies of a book, but I'm not, so I will be posting the poems I read, as requested. (And thank you again, it is a great compliment to receive.)

This is the first poem I read at the First Annual Albion College Creative Writing Reading (I will make separate posts for each poem, to avoid the problem of exceedingly long posts)
*


The Act of Writing a Letter



I fill a page
with the details of my life and mail it
to my grandmother. I clean my room simply so I can say
I have done so. Maybe I comment on a book
I've been reading at night before I dream. Or I tell her
what I cooked the night before, or some nights before that,
let her imagine the steam in my face as I stir a pot on the range.
She finds the small envelope with my handwriting
between glossy postcards and larger envelopes
with her proper name typed out.

She replies on cream stationary, gold lined
envelopes. She smiles at my neatness, then
finishes her coffee. She's glad I write to her.

Hot and sharp stick me. I eye the stack of letters I've addressed
but never sent. For every one she opens
there are four mouldering in envelopes,
under smooth-faced magazines with shining make-up ads
and stray papers ringed with coffee stains.

Write about your world

The title is spoken by my advisor.


“Write about your world”

Breathe in experience : breathe out poetry
—Muriel Rukeyser


How can I see the world if I have to keep my head down? It's easier to watch the ground, count cracks in the sidewalk as I cautiously step over them.

It's cold. Let me drink coffee and feel it sledding down my throat. Let me forget the sludge stuck to the underbelly of my car, staring at me as I kick it from the car's frame.

At night a tree cracks outside my window while I lay in bed. I think about the papers lining my walls—poems and cousins of poems and half-sisters of poems. Out my window

I see a face in the trees, but it is just my backyard, a stump of a neighbor's fir or an overflowing trash can.

If I did write about the world I'd talk about the moon and how much I miss her in the daytime.

When I exhale, the pages taped to the wall above me shudder. The covers are stale with sweat and shed dermis, and the dust mites feed on them.

The dresser sits missing a leg. It's holding clothes I haven't worn since I was twelve. I keep them because I worry about the space they'll leave

when they're gone. Is this my world? Feet pad in the hallway, water runs into a glass. A hacking cough rattles in the kitchen, a cracked, warped bell.

So many years looking at the ground and my neck is permanently curved. I can look up when lying on my bed, see the ceiling.

A child lived here once. Parents painted glitter on the ceiling, glinting. I am afraid someone will break my body open like a piñata, and I, like confetti-candy, will fall free.

ruth, n.; spald, v.

ruth: The quality of being compassionate; pitifulness; the feeling of sorrow for another; compassion, pity.
Sorrow, grief, distress; lamentation.

spald:
a. trans. To splinter, split, break up, lay open or flat. b. intr. To go apart, to splay out
Hence spalding, a split and dried fish, a speldring; spalding-knife, a knife for splitting fish.

Fraud

I am currently working on a poetry thesis as a senior at Albion College. The title of the manuscript is Espalier. The poem "Fraud" is the first piece of this manuscript.

*

Fraud

We hurt each other and call it honesty.
— Margaret Atwood


At night, I slide beside my mother
who snores. I slice down her spine
each vertebrae a dot, an outline. I peal back
skin from her shoulder blades,
give her vestigial wings. I read there and record it
in my handwriting. I change words,
rearrange facts. I plagiarize. Sometimes,
I scrape the skin from her skull to see
if the tracks of dreams are fresh enough to hunt.
They’re stale.

At my grandmother’s, I find her scar on her chest
re-crack her cage. She is so whelmed with words
I cannot write it all. They crowd, sentences
over sentences, each declaration
blurs the next. I don’t find what I want.

Sometimes I seek strangers
at the hospital and while the patient naps
or fades into a drugged haze I undress their wounds.
My nose close enough to smell the rot
of infection my nostrils flare, inhale
the evacuation of bacteria. I never find my reflection.
While I copy I fictionalize; I change names
and circumstances. But they’ll find me out.
They will know I stole. I will cower
when they will strip me as others bring
fluorescent lights. They will eye every inch.
I will call it honesty and they will find
my skin clean of scars.