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.
28 April 2009
25 April 2009
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.
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!
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!
14 April 2009
(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.
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.
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,
The color of caution signs.
Not a warning, Think twice before you swallow
As consolation: think of autumn, of leaves
The color of convict uniforms.
Always in a coat pocket, in a backpack, in a purse,
Ever-orange cylinder, dimensions predetermined
A prisoner executed each day, swallowed,
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 themalready 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.
*
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.
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.
05 April 2009
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.
“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.
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