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.