Sunday, December 28, 2014
I do not always look when it snows. I fear it will stop and the skies will open, paper-thin and blue, and leave me uncovered and cold without reason. Unfiltered sun strikes me hard, always on my neck, tucked in the joints of my fingers. I feel aware of my age—the sun rounded to four point five billion years old. I don't care about the age of the clouds. I'm told anyway that our water could be older than our star. I can enjoy their drift into material and immaterial imagination, flushing their bodies against the windows and onto the lawn. If I could see the spots changing on the sun, maybe I wouldn't fear aging in its way.
Friday, December 12, 2014
Like No One Came
October morning, first snow drifted
across the wood-grain window sills
on eastern walls. Ice coated tree limbs,
but the sky still felt watercolor.
A picture of summer in liquid amber.
There shouldn't have been snow;
the roads still lay in black bands
on their sides, waiting instead
for simple rain. But waves beat
like a dusk in the sunlight.
Now and then the breeze whipped
my skirt back and licked me
as a lover, circles in my thighs,
the small of my back, skin raised
in heated pleas of oh God and now here.
The ocean ached in a shuffle of limb
until it was too dark to move.
Too cold for October, for Sundays.
I pulled my hands from my tangled hair
and cupped the snow. It stuck
to my wet fingers and I had to open
my hands before it melted away.
Thrust toward summer's sky
with an oh God and you're here.
Winter made a sparrow in my eye
—numbed my hands and left me
stranded by the sea next morning.
across the wood-grain window sills
on eastern walls. Ice coated tree limbs,
but the sky still felt watercolor.
A picture of summer in liquid amber.
There shouldn't have been snow;
the roads still lay in black bands
on their sides, waiting instead
for simple rain. But waves beat
like a dusk in the sunlight.
Now and then the breeze whipped
my skirt back and licked me
as a lover, circles in my thighs,
the small of my back, skin raised
in heated pleas of oh God and now here.
The ocean ached in a shuffle of limb
until it was too dark to move.
Too cold for October, for Sundays.
I pulled my hands from my tangled hair
and cupped the snow. It stuck
to my wet fingers and I had to open
my hands before it melted away.
Thrust toward summer's sky
with an oh God and you're here.
Winter made a sparrow in my eye
—numbed my hands and left me
stranded by the sea next morning.
Monday, December 1, 2014
Vi-o-let
I colored in your lips, violet
like the blooms drifting across
the wide cumulous sky.
Like fingers that can’t catch
the violet-pearlescent buttons
down your belly. Sometimes
a violent violet pressed slowly
into your thighs.
You were violet petals
twisted into cloud and frozen
into violet ice crystals,
melted into his gaping
violet maw. Tugged into
his unseen violet stomach
and intestines, spit back out
onto your own skin again.
When you back away, violet
nails scraping the walls, tell him
I say hello. Taste violet words
and leave violet puddles to stain
the carpet where your violet lips
were pressed and held.
The clouds are so beautiful
rolling violet overhead.
Show him how much violet
there is in his blood too.
like the blooms drifting across
the wide cumulous sky.
Like fingers that can’t catch
the violet-pearlescent buttons
down your belly. Sometimes
a violent violet pressed slowly
into your thighs.
You were violet petals
twisted into cloud and frozen
into violet ice crystals,
melted into his gaping
violet maw. Tugged into
his unseen violet stomach
and intestines, spit back out
onto your own skin again.
When you back away, violet
nails scraping the walls, tell him
I say hello. Taste violet words
and leave violet puddles to stain
the carpet where your violet lips
were pressed and held.
The clouds are so beautiful
rolling violet overhead.
Show him how much violet
there is in his blood too.
To Myself Who Loved a God (draft 1)
If I believed that angels licked
the corners of my book pages,
maybe I’d believe in divination
as a gradient of godliness.
But you run away
from your own words.
I wish I could find that god
you said knows. That she is
everything turning stars.
You stare into the sun,
but you tell yourself not
to watch your cornea burn.
You could walk, incarnate. A god
barefoot on concrete, toes
guttered with rainbow water,
or oil-slicked blood.
It will spill from skies and lips.
I know
how you feel about the water cycle.
Precipitation on your glass dries
your lips. Not thirsty.
You lay outside in curves of desert sand.
There’s a freedom in forgetting
to drink, you murmur between the slope
of your hips and the dips of your neck,
where the droplets slide and dry
before the sun can rise.
This sting is the slice of angel’s
wing on my cheek, and it is just
to lay where everyone lays,
with the sun in their eyes,
skyward by mouth.
the corners of my book pages,
maybe I’d believe in divination
as a gradient of godliness.
But you run away
from your own words.
I wish I could find that god
you said knows. That she is
everything turning stars.
You stare into the sun,
but you tell yourself not
to watch your cornea burn.
You could walk, incarnate. A god
barefoot on concrete, toes
guttered with rainbow water,
or oil-slicked blood.
It will spill from skies and lips.
I know
how you feel about the water cycle.
Precipitation on your glass dries
your lips. Not thirsty.
You lay outside in curves of desert sand.
There’s a freedom in forgetting
to drink, you murmur between the slope
of your hips and the dips of your neck,
where the droplets slide and dry
before the sun can rise.
This sting is the slice of angel’s
wing on my cheek, and it is just
to lay where everyone lays,
with the sun in their eyes,
skyward by mouth.
Sunday, November 23, 2014
Real Picture Thinkers
I dreamed that the shadows were poltergeists. The shadows reach out and wrap their limbless limbs generata into themselves. There's darker darkness, almost red, reeling in their chests. They didn't move except their mouths, but then they convinced children to roll glass bottles and remote controls across the floor. When my parents saw my younger sister roll a wine bottle from the closet to his hands, they didn't hear the voice, and they didn't see her moving except to grab it in the end. When she was old enough to talk about it, she couldn’t remember ever moving the bottle with her mind. But I saw it, disembodied.
When I woke, I wasn't afraid of the dark. I was afraid of the voices claiming to be timeless and the noses poking out of the corners. The medial cleft nudging into and out of the light. I remembered that I made the shadow real. I had hunched my shoulders in the corner and bent my neck down to birth a shadow from my chest with the white walls. White palms open and obliged by leaning against them and forgetting to turn out the light. The shadows weren't made of the house, they weren't in the foundation, they weren't out of the sunrise and sunset. They were a mutual agreement between body and light bulb.
In that real room, my older brother had kept his collected rocks when he was young. Everyone collected rocks. The ones that would look a beautiful ruddy red in the water, but dry to the same gray-brown of all the others plucked out. Everyone keeps them in boxes under their bed or in their closet, or the ones still tinged pink or orange on their windowsills. They were beautiful once, under the algae and liquid sun. Sometimes they pull down the cartoon-pasted cardboard and take the rocks to the bathroom sink, to rub them red for a few minutes again, leaving them in muddy water on the counter to dry and go back into the dark. Heavy treasure collections. When my brother moved out, he took his rocks with him. I found more boxes, rubbing down the dust in his closet, heavy with gray rocks, light with black volcanic obsidian and scoria.
Scoria—once a hotter red than I could ever imagine touching, air trapped inside to make it feel light as styrofoam peanuts. There would always be shadows inside there, unless crushed to dust and lain out supplicant inside a cube of light. There are only no shadows for a light source, and these shadows would still be so minute to almost not exist, but even knowing they were microscopically there pulled my eyes away from environment and into them again. The bubbles were so small they overwhelmingly nauseated me as much as, in theory, fascinated me. Trypophobia: fear of tiny holes that could kill us if we saw them poking through skin. The shadow of my nose on my cheek when I turned was another source of anxiety. When I was young I spent hours worrying that one eye saw my nose dark and one eye saw it light. One eye saw more red and one eye saw more blue. I didn’t worry when I looked into the sun, eyes open or closed, a light so white it blended to the blue sky or veins so red they pushed through to the optic nerve. And there in my dream I knelt down to touch noses with a shadow. There I bent and cradled a shadow in and into my gut like I was lava hardening with itching skin.
Whenever I imagine shadow—true shadow, where we still believe light is somewhere to cast it instead of simple abandoned lightless spaces—there are red pyramids and blue spheres polishing each other brighter and brighter. They can’t talk and their bodies don’t make friction, but I imagine backing toward the light before I turn away, out of the room, and try not to think about my nose or its pores or the fact that I can only see my eyes firsthand if I take one out first.
Inspired by a classmate's Soma(tic) creation—Shadow-Watcher.
When I woke, I wasn't afraid of the dark. I was afraid of the voices claiming to be timeless and the noses poking out of the corners. The medial cleft nudging into and out of the light. I remembered that I made the shadow real. I had hunched my shoulders in the corner and bent my neck down to birth a shadow from my chest with the white walls. White palms open and obliged by leaning against them and forgetting to turn out the light. The shadows weren't made of the house, they weren't in the foundation, they weren't out of the sunrise and sunset. They were a mutual agreement between body and light bulb.
In that real room, my older brother had kept his collected rocks when he was young. Everyone collected rocks. The ones that would look a beautiful ruddy red in the water, but dry to the same gray-brown of all the others plucked out. Everyone keeps them in boxes under their bed or in their closet, or the ones still tinged pink or orange on their windowsills. They were beautiful once, under the algae and liquid sun. Sometimes they pull down the cartoon-pasted cardboard and take the rocks to the bathroom sink, to rub them red for a few minutes again, leaving them in muddy water on the counter to dry and go back into the dark. Heavy treasure collections. When my brother moved out, he took his rocks with him. I found more boxes, rubbing down the dust in his closet, heavy with gray rocks, light with black volcanic obsidian and scoria.
Scoria—once a hotter red than I could ever imagine touching, air trapped inside to make it feel light as styrofoam peanuts. There would always be shadows inside there, unless crushed to dust and lain out supplicant inside a cube of light. There are only no shadows for a light source, and these shadows would still be so minute to almost not exist, but even knowing they were microscopically there pulled my eyes away from environment and into them again. The bubbles were so small they overwhelmingly nauseated me as much as, in theory, fascinated me. Trypophobia: fear of tiny holes that could kill us if we saw them poking through skin. The shadow of my nose on my cheek when I turned was another source of anxiety. When I was young I spent hours worrying that one eye saw my nose dark and one eye saw it light. One eye saw more red and one eye saw more blue. I didn’t worry when I looked into the sun, eyes open or closed, a light so white it blended to the blue sky or veins so red they pushed through to the optic nerve. And there in my dream I knelt down to touch noses with a shadow. There I bent and cradled a shadow in and into my gut like I was lava hardening with itching skin.
Whenever I imagine shadow—true shadow, where we still believe light is somewhere to cast it instead of simple abandoned lightless spaces—there are red pyramids and blue spheres polishing each other brighter and brighter. They can’t talk and their bodies don’t make friction, but I imagine backing toward the light before I turn away, out of the room, and try not to think about my nose or its pores or the fact that I can only see my eyes firsthand if I take one out first.
Inspired by a classmate's Soma(tic) creation—Shadow-Watcher.
Wednesday, November 19, 2014
Refutation
We came to receive the dead
no hands but our hands
under their flesh—
no one wanted to say they were dead already, no one wanted to say, “I’m gonna die soon,” so the flesh pressed in like the indentation of spring soil, opening up for seed and forgetting to close up again, needed to close up to bring up the roots, but wouldn’t close up again around our fingers, just hung open and wet and stank a fierce cry out to the wagons like we were killing them again. Feet yellow and peeling with soft heels—don’t touch ‘em, just let ‘em drop, nowhere to go now but down.
Funny they should be open for seed and we take ‘em all and bury ‘em down, acorn shells like we could forget ‘em over winter and have a new man spring up somewhere else. Takes root somewhere else, so we never know it’s the same man with the punctured, sunken-in chest holes. No telling the women when their fever got too hot that they would grow up again somewhere else. We just hoped they let their body be quiet so we’re not blamed for their silence, for their not calling out to us, “Help me”/”I can’t” and waiting without the long wait for their chest holes to come out.
The wheels crack and turn, reluctant like a cat smacked when it comes to the door then called to come again. Wagon’s heavy cause there’s a dead weight. Those hearts filled up with sludge that oozes out of their lungs and noses even though they aren't breathing to push it out. Their hearts heavier than a boomin’ heart keepin’ the skin from breaking. They're breaking apart all over, and the wood is breaking cause of ‘em too. They’re seven to a wagon, even though our hands are already tired and our legs tired from pushing ‘em in. They're falling all over themselves like they never knew how to lay still and pray. We're scared of ‘em falling on us again, spread like yellow pollen all on everything, so we make the trip more times to keep them where they're at. All the cats already screamed outta the street for the smell. There is no food in this flesh, just like there is no man left standing ‘til he’s gone to seed and fallen all apart and ended up in our hands.
Only a quarter mile to the graves. Pastor stopped worrying so much about the markers. We hope he’s praying all the time, cause there isn't anyone else who can kneel and then feel know they're gonna stand back up. It’s those women on their backs with their hands on their stomachs, praying, pray to us, and then spitting at us cause we aren't the angels they ask for. We’re nothing but shadows when the fever comes on that talk to them in madness, say, “Help me”/”I can’t.”
Their children stay quiet and stop crying when the sun sets, and they still look up at the rooftops through the ceilings and see there the gathering of soot and smoke, and none of it stinks like the ground does with the water coming down from the sky and washing down that soot to make their feet more dirty with the waste. We’re one to say we know how they feel, with those feet in mud and shit so it clumps over their toes and makes their breaths shuffle down, breaths come heavy and heavier by the time they've gone quiet. It was still their mamas sitting and crying that would give out more calls—they’d like not to die—but they're sitting and crying in the dark with their hands on each child’s head.
The children have no idea their papa’s already dead in our fingers, but they peel apart too and wither like they sat in the sun too long, their little eyes yellow and cast down like daffodils. But here now, they know now. They find out real easy cause the air isn't fresh, Pa is dead, and it isn't like us to sit down for a minute and say we're sorry about it cause we have more of the witherings to bring down and pile down and all our eyes are cast down too.
The dirt is dry ‘til we touch it, then it flows over like rose petals flipped inside out after rain. We got some to just stay and shovel dirt and mud, six feet across and twelve feet wide, twenty pairs of feet cause there’s nobody left to mourn for their soul like there should be, they're just mourning their own lives and the lives of the people still awake. Shovelin’ like maybe if we plant ‘em all together there’s a rooster crow on the other side to lead them up all at once in the springtime, yellow-green sprouts outta their graves and back to their woman’s arms to forget us all over again. We came to receive the dead, we gotta anyway, and we gotta hope that maybe our seeds find darker soil and shoot up taller than the men we smell falling apart on the road. No hands but our hands, and those wagons still used like they’re not going to set ‘em burning as soon as the sun stops shedding their skin so they can light the fire. We're only rich in the pollen spilling over the edges, stand and hope fire strikes down mercy for the wood and the sick spilled outta their mouths.
We gotta stop eventually and pull down our eyes to cover all we got left. Dark comes up over the murky yellows and those children smell themselves coming apart and they lean on the walls and cover their mouths, but their feet get splashed anyway—they’re dyed yellow anyway—and soon they're gonna sit on down and not get back up. Even though they're still leanin’ up like they have listening to do.
Sleep comes like it could reconcile our blood with our bodies. There’s that yellow fog sneaking into dreams like you could reach out and bring it to your lips leaking through your fingers like liquor if you weren’t already running from it. Like you couldn’t run during the day or during the night cause there was always enough light to rise up that yellow fog. It's coming in your dreams through your hands when you touch your eyes and they get dim and orange like the flame’s goin’ out in a second. You’re outta your body and you seeing it fall apart like you're the ground in an earthquake you've heard of, Hell reaching outta your chest and bringing all of yourself back in. If any one of us stepped outta ourselves we’d go full bloom into the haze.
no hands but our hands
under their flesh—
no one wanted to say they were dead already, no one wanted to say, “I’m gonna die soon,” so the flesh pressed in like the indentation of spring soil, opening up for seed and forgetting to close up again, needed to close up to bring up the roots, but wouldn’t close up again around our fingers, just hung open and wet and stank a fierce cry out to the wagons like we were killing them again. Feet yellow and peeling with soft heels—don’t touch ‘em, just let ‘em drop, nowhere to go now but down.
Funny they should be open for seed and we take ‘em all and bury ‘em down, acorn shells like we could forget ‘em over winter and have a new man spring up somewhere else. Takes root somewhere else, so we never know it’s the same man with the punctured, sunken-in chest holes. No telling the women when their fever got too hot that they would grow up again somewhere else. We just hoped they let their body be quiet so we’re not blamed for their silence, for their not calling out to us, “Help me”/”I can’t” and waiting without the long wait for their chest holes to come out.
The wheels crack and turn, reluctant like a cat smacked when it comes to the door then called to come again. Wagon’s heavy cause there’s a dead weight. Those hearts filled up with sludge that oozes out of their lungs and noses even though they aren't breathing to push it out. Their hearts heavier than a boomin’ heart keepin’ the skin from breaking. They're breaking apart all over, and the wood is breaking cause of ‘em too. They’re seven to a wagon, even though our hands are already tired and our legs tired from pushing ‘em in. They're falling all over themselves like they never knew how to lay still and pray. We're scared of ‘em falling on us again, spread like yellow pollen all on everything, so we make the trip more times to keep them where they're at. All the cats already screamed outta the street for the smell. There is no food in this flesh, just like there is no man left standing ‘til he’s gone to seed and fallen all apart and ended up in our hands.
Only a quarter mile to the graves. Pastor stopped worrying so much about the markers. We hope he’s praying all the time, cause there isn't anyone else who can kneel and then feel know they're gonna stand back up. It’s those women on their backs with their hands on their stomachs, praying, pray to us, and then spitting at us cause we aren't the angels they ask for. We’re nothing but shadows when the fever comes on that talk to them in madness, say, “Help me”/”I can’t.”
Their children stay quiet and stop crying when the sun sets, and they still look up at the rooftops through the ceilings and see there the gathering of soot and smoke, and none of it stinks like the ground does with the water coming down from the sky and washing down that soot to make their feet more dirty with the waste. We’re one to say we know how they feel, with those feet in mud and shit so it clumps over their toes and makes their breaths shuffle down, breaths come heavy and heavier by the time they've gone quiet. It was still their mamas sitting and crying that would give out more calls—they’d like not to die—but they're sitting and crying in the dark with their hands on each child’s head.
The children have no idea their papa’s already dead in our fingers, but they peel apart too and wither like they sat in the sun too long, their little eyes yellow and cast down like daffodils. But here now, they know now. They find out real easy cause the air isn't fresh, Pa is dead, and it isn't like us to sit down for a minute and say we're sorry about it cause we have more of the witherings to bring down and pile down and all our eyes are cast down too.
The dirt is dry ‘til we touch it, then it flows over like rose petals flipped inside out after rain. We got some to just stay and shovel dirt and mud, six feet across and twelve feet wide, twenty pairs of feet cause there’s nobody left to mourn for their soul like there should be, they're just mourning their own lives and the lives of the people still awake. Shovelin’ like maybe if we plant ‘em all together there’s a rooster crow on the other side to lead them up all at once in the springtime, yellow-green sprouts outta their graves and back to their woman’s arms to forget us all over again. We came to receive the dead, we gotta anyway, and we gotta hope that maybe our seeds find darker soil and shoot up taller than the men we smell falling apart on the road. No hands but our hands, and those wagons still used like they’re not going to set ‘em burning as soon as the sun stops shedding their skin so they can light the fire. We're only rich in the pollen spilling over the edges, stand and hope fire strikes down mercy for the wood and the sick spilled outta their mouths.
We gotta stop eventually and pull down our eyes to cover all we got left. Dark comes up over the murky yellows and those children smell themselves coming apart and they lean on the walls and cover their mouths, but their feet get splashed anyway—they’re dyed yellow anyway—and soon they're gonna sit on down and not get back up. Even though they're still leanin’ up like they have listening to do.
Sleep comes like it could reconcile our blood with our bodies. There’s that yellow fog sneaking into dreams like you could reach out and bring it to your lips leaking through your fingers like liquor if you weren’t already running from it. Like you couldn’t run during the day or during the night cause there was always enough light to rise up that yellow fog. It's coming in your dreams through your hands when you touch your eyes and they get dim and orange like the flame’s goin’ out in a second. You’re outta your body and you seeing it fall apart like you're the ground in an earthquake you've heard of, Hell reaching outta your chest and bringing all of yourself back in. If any one of us stepped outta ourselves we’d go full bloom into the haze.
Sunday, November 16, 2014
Rachel Maria Məráj Davis
Here and there Rachel Maria Davis picks up a rock and pretends a celestial being can hear her better when it’s being rubbed. Any celestial being and any rock, but preferably smooth in texture and in philosophy. So it won’t catch as much when put in her pocket. Rachel Maria Davis prays before bed. Only when everyone else is asleep. Rachel prays for her pets and parents and friends away in college in Minnesota and Utah State. She prays to always safely cross at cross-walks. She doesn’t carry rocks to bed for this purpose. Rachel once did keep crystals under her pillow, but these were to attract supernatural beings, not for discourse. Rachel Maria Davis once had a dream a woman in see-through purple robes floated in her window while she slept. Rachel Maria dreamed the woman picked her up and carried her to a moon-sized star. The star bubbled with iron and oxygen. Rachel dreamed that this was her true home. She dreamed that Rachel Maria was not her only name. She sewed herself a robe for when the woman would come find her. Rachel Maria Davis was 11 years old. No one that she knew of saw her drawings of the woman in the window. Her brother admired the sketchy pencil lines around the woman’s feet and hands without fingers or toes. Somewhere else a woman went to bed with purple pajamas. She dreamed Rachel Maria Davis rang her doorbell and handed her a bouquet of purple and white tulips. It was the middle of winter, but the snowflakes on their petals didn’t melt when she brought them inside. She could see the shapes the ice made like they floated right to her eyes when she looked at them. Rachel Maria Davis wasn’t invited inside, and simply walked away. She was barefoot. The woman couldn’t hear the crunch of the snow and ice under her heels. No one else dreamed of a girl bringing tulips that night. Many more people dreamed of themselves caught in a field of horses. The pintos and palominos ran through them like ghosts. The clouds were low. The sky inclined to be almost touchable. On some red ridge of distant sandstone, someone else laid on their back and dipped their hands into cumulus clouds. Their hands were cold up to the wrists. When they brought them down to their chest, they broke off in pieces of frosted ice. In their place grew silver fingers. They could dip their new fingers into their chest and feel their heart contracting. Their hands fell into the sand at their sides and they just watched the clouds waltzing above. Just below them, someone else was dreaming that God’s hands reached down to them in the middle of the night. He reached through a mountain and touched the top of their head. Like a kiss with His fingers. They felt a warmth course through them so hot they could almost see color—they could almost see red in the grays. Rachel Maria Davis was dreaming of summer by the horse dreamscape. The mosquitoes glowed as they emerged from a fire. They trickled into the sky and became stars. A sudden storm from white clouds brought down droplets of lightning. They landed on Rachel’s bare legs and freckled them with tiny star shapes with perfectly equal points. When she touched them they stung. The fir trees bent over and smoothed out Rachel Maria Davis’s legs, leaving only bright stripes of comet tails. When Rachel Maria Davis woke up, she picked up a branch from her favorite tree. Rachel Maria peeled off the bark and cut the broken ends. She sanded them by hand. Her fingers were tired and unfeeling for twenty minutes. Rachel was satisfied when she saw a star-shaped core that went all the way through. Rachel Maria Davis picks up the wand sometimes when she feels particularly spiritual. She points the wood into her chest and then straight up from between her breasts. She imagines spirals of light inkling out of the tip slowly then quickly like a spider’s web. She doesn’t imagine the end of the light strands. She also doesn’t imagine their infinity. She imagines disturbing the balance of the universe with positive crystalline energy. The strands of light disappear into the darkness somewhere above her. The sky ripples like disturbed still water. She sets the rod and the rocks on dark-wood shelves of her bookcase and then goes out. She kept her crystals in particular in a small box under her bed. Right under her pillow. She figures that it can’t hurt to leave them where they are. Sometimes she dreams that they whisper and then burst into thin pink shards that coat the entire street.
Wednesday, October 29, 2014
The fire burns a static air—
The water sticks in chaliced flames, elbow to elbow.
Gray and warm Saturdays
ablaze in gasoline and cardboard.
Somewhere it stops—forearm to ankle,
spray to neck and shoulder—
Strategy in asphalt encourages
men saying, "Oh, blessed be, blessed be."
Hands raised like offerings to the silhouetted robins
dropping out of skies, egg by blue
eye watching from the pump.
She's quiet, hands on her knees,
squatted over the puddles.
"I have too many white skirts,"
she says, fingers waving the hem,
stitches turned dark and roots aching up through the stain.
The water sticks in chaliced flames, elbow to elbow.
Gray and warm Saturdays
ablaze in gasoline and cardboard.
Somewhere it stops—forearm to ankle,
spray to neck and shoulder—
Strategy in asphalt encourages
men saying, "Oh, blessed be, blessed be."
Hands raised like offerings to the silhouetted robins
dropping out of skies, egg by blue
eye watching from the pump.
She's quiet, hands on her knees,
squatted over the puddles.
"I have too many white skirts,"
she says, fingers waving the hem,
stitches turned dark and roots aching up through the stain.
Monday, October 27, 2014
Quiet Out
This girl never really wanted
to be a runaway. There went
star-studded boots
with a moonshoe print,
hot tar mottled to catch up.
Her dad drove by her at 5 miles
an hour, hovering on brake,
Skyline all the way down
the summer street. Your mom
is worried. I know—she's still
your mom. She wanted
to stumble to those long arms
keeping her company.
She held out for a while
and slid back thanks
softened with "I would never
really leave you."
When he died, first
hot-tar rain of the year,
she was dropped off
into a plate of neighbor's
spaghetti sliding out the tines
because the sauce was all water.
When did her fingers stop
shaking up gravity—to push
her tongue in, swallow
down low-air conditions?
Tracks to the horizon both ways.
That iron oxide rubbed silver,
line after line, ping after cling
to what you know, girl.
The trains could move faster
than heaven's freeways,
yellow lines behind the dust-
smudged Milky Way
all in the rear-view.
to be a runaway. There went
star-studded boots
with a moonshoe print,
hot tar mottled to catch up.
Her dad drove by her at 5 miles
an hour, hovering on brake,
Skyline all the way down
the summer street. Your mom
is worried. I know—she's still
your mom. She wanted
to stumble to those long arms
keeping her company.
She held out for a while
and slid back thanks
softened with "I would never
really leave you."
When he died, first
hot-tar rain of the year,
she was dropped off
into a plate of neighbor's
spaghetti sliding out the tines
because the sauce was all water.
When did her fingers stop
shaking up gravity—to push
her tongue in, swallow
down low-air conditions?
Tracks to the horizon both ways.
That iron oxide rubbed silver,
line after line, ping after cling
to what you know, girl.
The trains could move faster
than heaven's freeways,
yellow lines behind the dust-
smudged Milky Way
all in the rear-view.
Monday, October 20, 2014
Intimate Pause
Remember the linoleum
yellowed with tiny blue-
cornflowered edges?
The base of a first home,
a first "yours" in beams
of sunlight. Sprinkled
over the cream counters
in dime-sized glow.
Snowed-in laughter
warming the windows.
A child wanders barefoot
through the house,
purple nightshirt
dragged over her shoulder
with sleep. She sucks
on the corner of a staticky
blanket and curls beneath
the table, on top of a moth
she cannot see. The clock ticks
along refrigerator mumble.
The front door opens
sunrise, top off a can
to spill mandarin up
the stairs, over the linoleum
in tiny wading pools.
Remember the man
with heavy hands, quietly
wrapping up a package
of tangled hair and deep
breath? A pink rose
pruned and dropped
deep-vased on the stove
for true morning
and a mother's rising eyes.
yellowed with tiny blue-
cornflowered edges?
The base of a first home,
a first "yours" in beams
of sunlight. Sprinkled
over the cream counters
in dime-sized glow.
Snowed-in laughter
warming the windows.
A child wanders barefoot
through the house,
purple nightshirt
dragged over her shoulder
with sleep. She sucks
on the corner of a staticky
blanket and curls beneath
the table, on top of a moth
she cannot see. The clock ticks
along refrigerator mumble.
The front door opens
sunrise, top off a can
to spill mandarin up
the stairs, over the linoleum
in tiny wading pools.
Remember the man
with heavy hands, quietly
wrapping up a package
of tangled hair and deep
breath? A pink rose
pruned and dropped
deep-vased on the stove
for true morning
and a mother's rising eyes.
Sunday, October 19, 2014
Pressure in the Chest
There is a hangman
draped in emerald on the wall.
Palms pressed flat
on wooden boards and nail-
heads bent up over their edges
like they could pray from their
exposed tips. Someone
calls up from the floor
for the curtains to be drawn,
nobody needs to be seeing
the room going dark,
but the hangman presses
harder into the steel.
Slowly bends and stirs his hands
through the soft moisture
of air—cheek against cheek,
breathing mutual lovers of erupted
nights. Lips to the floor,
the room falls black
and sky spills into him,
swell after swell.
draped in emerald on the wall.
Palms pressed flat
on wooden boards and nail-
heads bent up over their edges
like they could pray from their
exposed tips. Someone
calls up from the floor
for the curtains to be drawn,
nobody needs to be seeing
the room going dark,
but the hangman presses
harder into the steel.
Slowly bends and stirs his hands
through the soft moisture
of air—cheek against cheek,
breathing mutual lovers of erupted
nights. Lips to the floor,
the room falls black
and sky spills into him,
swell after swell.
Monday, October 13, 2014
Not a single word washed in rain
I'm not sure I can sleep
with the ghosts.
Laced
frostbite and heatstroke
fall down their wrists,
draped and drowned—
waking waters
dew over my eyelids.
In a rush of momentary
panic you've splintered—
static in your hair.
I turn the electric tinge to my mouth
with a thoughtful kiss—
I cannot find the name for it now.
Let our hair be cold in the sunrise.
We could lay our bodies
into the quiet God
at the smalls of our backs.
Foothill penstemon stains
feather into something else.
Saffron star-spots trickle into the dirt.
Surely I am tired.
I can feel
the petrichor, thick
as the mountains beneath the snow.
with the ghosts.
Laced
frostbite and heatstroke
fall down their wrists,
draped and drowned—
waking waters
dew over my eyelids.
In a rush of momentary
panic you've splintered—
static in your hair.
I turn the electric tinge to my mouth
with a thoughtful kiss—
I cannot find the name for it now.
Let our hair be cold in the sunrise.
We could lay our bodies
into the quiet God
at the smalls of our backs.
Foothill penstemon stains
feather into something else.
Saffron star-spots trickle into the dirt.
Surely I am tired.
I can feel
the petrichor, thick
as the mountains beneath the snow.
Thursday, October 2, 2014
So just say it, say something
If you gaze into starlight for long enough, the deck wood suddenly splinters below you. You follow your own pupil between Osiris and the night's Cassiopeia, gingerly gathered in skirt-folds of black more-fallen stars behind her never smile. Here the splinters sting your hands, oak sliding between the yellow tenderness of your palms, beneath the swirling calluses that shiver with shine. Black wood. Black because it's dark. Black because the rods can only catch so much, you suppose. Can only gather in cylindrical graphs, light, light, light, red dots across the blank. Don't touch your stinging palms to your stinging eyes—don't make alloy of this sliver. Stand shakily, knee by knee, broken boards below you. Your blood pounds lay down lay down through your back, to the small curve below mid-brain, right on the joint of round head to soft neck to carbonated bone.
A quick-write "meaning to writing" exercise from fiction class.
A quick-write "meaning to writing" exercise from fiction class.
Monday, September 29, 2014
Descendant of a Little King
His hands are soft,
almost translucent
up to his crescent-
moon cuticles.
He pulls his jacket sleeve
over healing cloudy calluses
to wrap his fingers around
a newly-pink cactus flower.
Jerusalem in his eyes,
psalms drip
from his closed lips
in the afternoon sun.
How could I ask
when the bones dried
over his still-beating
dismembered wings?
You just need to be gentle
with the small ones, he says
showing me the flower
in his open palm.
almost translucent
up to his crescent-
moon cuticles.
He pulls his jacket sleeve
over healing cloudy calluses
to wrap his fingers around
a newly-pink cactus flower.
Jerusalem in his eyes,
psalms drip
from his closed lips
in the afternoon sun.
How could I ask
when the bones dried
over his still-beating
dismembered wings?
You just need to be gentle
with the small ones, he says
showing me the flower
in his open palm.
To Defend
Her hands look dead,
blue slender fingers
curving toward each other.
She’s bent over the sidewalk,
arm extended to a black
cat with matted fur.
The bones of her spine
protrude into the rain
like Yellow Mountains
emerge from the mist.
I’d like to ask how she feels
never seeing sun.
Hands working through knots,
she tilts her head and says
she doesn’t mind the rain.
blue slender fingers
curving toward each other.
She’s bent over the sidewalk,
arm extended to a black
cat with matted fur.
The bones of her spine
protrude into the rain
like Yellow Mountains
emerge from the mist.
I’d like to ask how she feels
never seeing sun.
Hands working through knots,
she tilts her head and says
she doesn’t mind the rain.
Thursday, September 25, 2014
Recognition (second draft and still ugh)
1.
I am five years old, in a green or blue dress
—velvet, with white tights and black-strap shoes.
I am in a funeral home and everything is green.
The carpet is green and maroon—flowers curl
and leaves grow over and under our feet.
My eyes meet everyone’s crotch.
Black and brown slacks, mostly pleated.
Skirts past the knees and stockings just slightly
darker than women’s white skin. There’s a coffin
somewhere, but I can’t see inside. I can see
its dark wood. Its green velvet skirt.
Maybe we match. The dead man’s skirt and mine.
I lose myself in the crowd of legs, but find
my father’s hand with my right. I look up at a laugh,
but not my father’s. I don't know this face,
with gray hair instead of brown, sideburns
cut in line with his cheekbones. I tug away—desperate
—two, three steps toward the dead man.
2.
I hold my parents' hands outside. The green is bright,
no velveteen heaviness. Bronze plaques name
the bones behind them. My dad once heard of a boy
trapped overnight in a mortuary.
3.
Just after Christmas, my grandma tells us
she wants to die. She tells good memories
about dead men and women. She is happy
in a floral print shirt and compression socks
that day. We listen patiently in metal folding-
chairs and the dry, heated air. She has a cabinet
like her eyes, filled with small figures of porcelain
women and angels draped in white. A blue vase.
She always looks like herself, in every photo.
I imagine she smiles when her daughters catch her
talking to ghosts between sleeping and waking.
Her medications sit in a green plastic organizer
on a tiny metal table. We promise to visit soon.
4.
January. She was singularly ready to die.
I can see in the coffin now, her curled hair plastered
to her scalp and pulled away from her green dress.
She doesn’t look like her, is more herself in photos
and typewritten letters from the president.
No smile. She is more herself in stories
of dead people she somehow recognizes.
I am five years old, in a green or blue dress
—velvet, with white tights and black-strap shoes.
I am in a funeral home and everything is green.
The carpet is green and maroon—flowers curl
and leaves grow over and under our feet.
My eyes meet everyone’s crotch.
Black and brown slacks, mostly pleated.
Skirts past the knees and stockings just slightly
darker than women’s white skin. There’s a coffin
somewhere, but I can’t see inside. I can see
its dark wood. Its green velvet skirt.
Maybe we match. The dead man’s skirt and mine.
I lose myself in the crowd of legs, but find
my father’s hand with my right. I look up at a laugh,
but not my father’s. I don't know this face,
with gray hair instead of brown, sideburns
cut in line with his cheekbones. I tug away—desperate
—two, three steps toward the dead man.
2.
I hold my parents' hands outside. The green is bright,
no velveteen heaviness. Bronze plaques name
the bones behind them. My dad once heard of a boy
trapped overnight in a mortuary.
3.
Just after Christmas, my grandma tells us
she wants to die. She tells good memories
about dead men and women. She is happy
in a floral print shirt and compression socks
that day. We listen patiently in metal folding-
chairs and the dry, heated air. She has a cabinet
like her eyes, filled with small figures of porcelain
women and angels draped in white. A blue vase.
She always looks like herself, in every photo.
I imagine she smiles when her daughters catch her
talking to ghosts between sleeping and waking.
Her medications sit in a green plastic organizer
on a tiny metal table. We promise to visit soon.
4.
January. She was singularly ready to die.
I can see in the coffin now, her curled hair plastered
to her scalp and pulled away from her green dress.
She doesn’t look like her, is more herself in photos
and typewritten letters from the president.
No smile. She is more herself in stories
of dead people she somehow recognizes.
Tuesday, September 23, 2014
Uranography
1. Suppose I were to say I was crushed by the sky. That I was Atlas and my hands cracked into the stars. Stars made of fire and burning flesh rumbled down my arms, and it was ugly. The blanket of sky fell black over me and I fell with it down to Earth at a 7.0 magnitude.
2. Nowadays Atlas is shown instead holding up our little sphere, back bent and muscles flexed. But that’s the point of it—what would he be standing on to keep the oceans in his hands?
3. Maybe it was momentary deconstruction and reconstruction, layering himself across universes—until the sky was his feet as much as it was the sky.
4. The ocean floor is about 5-7% explored. The ocean itself only .5% explored. Despite the vastness of water, at least in the oceans there’s a conceivable “whole.” An end containing itself. Some of the deep-sea creatures that never see sunlight look terrifying, but I don’t think anywhere near as terrifying as the idea that we might be alone in the universe. Observable or otherwise.
5. I wonder sometimes if I’m preoccupied with the slow destruction of myself anyway. With tweezers pulling hair only to feel the tiny things slide out of my skin, not honestly to get rid of them. To experience a forceful coming-apart. To see the red spots left on my legs.
6. Books are known to fade and become weaker in the sunlight. Wedding clothes too. Paintings. For precious objects, find instead a cool, dark space.
7. My oldest books rest against a blue wall in my room, where the setting sun-rays hit just right to fade and weaken their binding. Thrift store Shakespeare collections. A copy of Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, published 1882, owned by my great-great-aunt or -uncle on my father’s side. I want to move them, but they’ve been there so long. I don’t know where I could put them.
8. When I was little my brother and I thought we could find anything in our garage. There were old boxes of cookbooks, clearance silver necklaces. Easter baskets and dusty computer drives. Garbage cans full of not-quite-garbage. We never knew what we were going to find! But eventually we grew up, and cleaned up, and realized nothing useful ended up in the cool, dark spaces.
9. Things are supposed to fall apart, we say.
10. Once I visited a Catholic church in San Diego. Sunlight weaseled through the stained glass, speckling itself over the opposite pews. Maybe the wood would fade in a few years. The reds and oranges felt like fire in the heart of the chapel. I lit a prayer candle under the outstretched hands of some saint (Mary?) for the death of my friend’s father. All of the tea lights flickered down and sighed back up in a little remembrance. A remembrance of—something, I hope.
11. Horses can run through fire if provoked. Mothers can run through fire if provoked too. Self-help seminars say you, Insignificant, can become magnificent—a fire-walker!—with only the power of your mind.
12. Black takes so much ink. In theory blackness is an absence, but a starry sky in a window of plain white paper is dense, its vastness collected in the stillness of the page. Its vastness concealed in congealed wood fragments, made into comic books. “I’m significant!” writes the author, in black lines on white. A little creation, a segment of the universe.
13. Segment: one of the parts into which something naturally separates or is divided; a division, portion, or section: “a segment of an orange.” (dictionary.com)
14. Photographic paper exposed too long on purpose. Burning, it’s called. I like to cut circles out of cardboard to lay in the middle of the pictures, blackening the whole piece but that one shape and whatever it contains. More light, more darkness.
15. That’s why we go blind staring at the sun! We see too much! Maybe some neo-futurist religious white woman thought that for a moment. Maybe I thought it. The point is, we both thought it, but I can’t be sure we thought it the same way.
16. My friend’s couches, brightly colored, smelled like some sweet sickness. The cigarette smoke only drifted in a mist through the window, but it found its way into the cotton. To him it was just smoke. I had to be okay with it then, but occasionally I smell a smoker’s clothes on the train. It smells like static build-up strong enough to burn hair and skin.
17. I feel like maybe he started to embrace dying as a side-effect of smoking.
18. The leaves didn’t turn until first snow one year. Even then, the yellow bones were stuck ringing with ice to the branches.
19. The skies were like ice that year too. They crackled and solidified beneath me—in appropriate Atlas fashion—and I was trapped between 43 shades of blue water and black space.
20. We are so much emptiness. Our atoms are more space than proton and electron.
21. This would lead one to wonder about the molecular mechanisms of touch, since it is obviously not just gears tugging our nerves toward each other.
22. I feel like I am so close, I say to myself, and I am. I feel like I can be protected in a loved one’s arms. But that emptiness drifts into my mind and I want to force my electrons into their atomic space instead of merely holding “close enough”. All of our emptiness together. It’s a stronger distance than my closeness can really be. It terrifies me.
23. But I want to think about things called “beautiful.” I don’t want my fears to be all I see. All you know.
24. All I know.
25. “Why should I feel lonely? is not our planet in the Milky Way?” (Thoreau)
26. Still, fearing one touch is all it would take, I try not to imagine reaching into the void of the sky. I reach for an arm’s length, not for the distant stars.
27. If our physical bodies are supposed to be silver mist, erased by a northward breeze, they are at least beautiful diluted by the morning sun. By tea light candles. By small somethings within our atomic space. Small somethings within the space of memory.
28. One summer my boyfriend and I went to see a movie in his dumpy truck. It was our first time going (we both forgot the address of the theater). He took a wrong turn past a copper field of grain, the sun just above the Oquirrhs. On that day the sky actually felt like freedom. A good openness, for once. I moved my hand against the whipping air and slid right through it. No sensation of it slipping through me. Just hot air, new streets, and a laugh.
29. Even if the comfort of our touch is an illusion, it’s still a comfort. And some sort of touch.
My first workshop piece for my fiction class, based on the format of Bluets by Maggie Nelson.
2. Nowadays Atlas is shown instead holding up our little sphere, back bent and muscles flexed. But that’s the point of it—what would he be standing on to keep the oceans in his hands?
3. Maybe it was momentary deconstruction and reconstruction, layering himself across universes—until the sky was his feet as much as it was the sky.
4. The ocean floor is about 5-7% explored. The ocean itself only .5% explored. Despite the vastness of water, at least in the oceans there’s a conceivable “whole.” An end containing itself. Some of the deep-sea creatures that never see sunlight look terrifying, but I don’t think anywhere near as terrifying as the idea that we might be alone in the universe. Observable or otherwise.
5. I wonder sometimes if I’m preoccupied with the slow destruction of myself anyway. With tweezers pulling hair only to feel the tiny things slide out of my skin, not honestly to get rid of them. To experience a forceful coming-apart. To see the red spots left on my legs.
6. Books are known to fade and become weaker in the sunlight. Wedding clothes too. Paintings. For precious objects, find instead a cool, dark space.
7. My oldest books rest against a blue wall in my room, where the setting sun-rays hit just right to fade and weaken their binding. Thrift store Shakespeare collections. A copy of Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, published 1882, owned by my great-great-aunt or -uncle on my father’s side. I want to move them, but they’ve been there so long. I don’t know where I could put them.
8. When I was little my brother and I thought we could find anything in our garage. There were old boxes of cookbooks, clearance silver necklaces. Easter baskets and dusty computer drives. Garbage cans full of not-quite-garbage. We never knew what we were going to find! But eventually we grew up, and cleaned up, and realized nothing useful ended up in the cool, dark spaces.
9. Things are supposed to fall apart, we say.
10. Once I visited a Catholic church in San Diego. Sunlight weaseled through the stained glass, speckling itself over the opposite pews. Maybe the wood would fade in a few years. The reds and oranges felt like fire in the heart of the chapel. I lit a prayer candle under the outstretched hands of some saint (Mary?) for the death of my friend’s father. All of the tea lights flickered down and sighed back up in a little remembrance. A remembrance of—something, I hope.
11. Horses can run through fire if provoked. Mothers can run through fire if provoked too. Self-help seminars say you, Insignificant, can become magnificent—a fire-walker!—with only the power of your mind.
12. Black takes so much ink. In theory blackness is an absence, but a starry sky in a window of plain white paper is dense, its vastness collected in the stillness of the page. Its vastness concealed in congealed wood fragments, made into comic books. “I’m significant!” writes the author, in black lines on white. A little creation, a segment of the universe.
13. Segment: one of the parts into which something naturally separates or is divided; a division, portion, or section: “a segment of an orange.” (dictionary.com)
14. Photographic paper exposed too long on purpose. Burning, it’s called. I like to cut circles out of cardboard to lay in the middle of the pictures, blackening the whole piece but that one shape and whatever it contains. More light, more darkness.
15. That’s why we go blind staring at the sun! We see too much! Maybe some neo-futurist religious white woman thought that for a moment. Maybe I thought it. The point is, we both thought it, but I can’t be sure we thought it the same way.
16. My friend’s couches, brightly colored, smelled like some sweet sickness. The cigarette smoke only drifted in a mist through the window, but it found its way into the cotton. To him it was just smoke. I had to be okay with it then, but occasionally I smell a smoker’s clothes on the train. It smells like static build-up strong enough to burn hair and skin.
17. I feel like maybe he started to embrace dying as a side-effect of smoking.
18. The leaves didn’t turn until first snow one year. Even then, the yellow bones were stuck ringing with ice to the branches.
19. The skies were like ice that year too. They crackled and solidified beneath me—in appropriate Atlas fashion—and I was trapped between 43 shades of blue water and black space.
20. We are so much emptiness. Our atoms are more space than proton and electron.
21. This would lead one to wonder about the molecular mechanisms of touch, since it is obviously not just gears tugging our nerves toward each other.
22. I feel like I am so close, I say to myself, and I am. I feel like I can be protected in a loved one’s arms. But that emptiness drifts into my mind and I want to force my electrons into their atomic space instead of merely holding “close enough”. All of our emptiness together. It’s a stronger distance than my closeness can really be. It terrifies me.
23. But I want to think about things called “beautiful.” I don’t want my fears to be all I see. All you know.
24. All I know.
25. “Why should I feel lonely? is not our planet in the Milky Way?” (Thoreau)
26. Still, fearing one touch is all it would take, I try not to imagine reaching into the void of the sky. I reach for an arm’s length, not for the distant stars.
27. If our physical bodies are supposed to be silver mist, erased by a northward breeze, they are at least beautiful diluted by the morning sun. By tea light candles. By small somethings within our atomic space. Small somethings within the space of memory.
28. One summer my boyfriend and I went to see a movie in his dumpy truck. It was our first time going (we both forgot the address of the theater). He took a wrong turn past a copper field of grain, the sun just above the Oquirrhs. On that day the sky actually felt like freedom. A good openness, for once. I moved my hand against the whipping air and slid right through it. No sensation of it slipping through me. Just hot air, new streets, and a laugh.
29. Even if the comfort of our touch is an illusion, it’s still a comfort. And some sort of touch.
My first workshop piece for my fiction class, based on the format of Bluets by Maggie Nelson.
Monday, September 15, 2014
Recognition
I am five years old, in a green or blue dress
—velvet, with white tights and black-strap shoes.
I am in a funeral home and everything is green.
The carpet is green and maroon—flowers curl
and leaves grow over and under our feet.
My eyes meet about everyone’s crotch.
Black and brown slacks, mostly pleated.
Skirts past the knees and stockings just slightly
darker than women’s white skin. There’s a coffin
somewhere, but I can’t see inside. I can see
its dark wood. Its green velvet skirt.
Maybe we match. The dead man’s skirt and mine.
I lose myself in the crowd of legs, but find
my father’s hand with my right. I look up at a laugh,
but not my father’s. I don’t know the man,
with gray hair instead of brown, sideburns
cut in line with his cheekbones. Well hello there!
Did you think I was someone else? I tug—desperate
—two, three steps toward the dead man.
I found my parents outside. The green was bright,
no velveteen heaviness. Bronze plaques named
the bones behind them. My dad once heard of a boy
trapped overnight in a mortuary.
Just after Christmas, with chocolates separated
in clear glass bowls, my grandma told us
she wanted to die. Not in words—in memories.
She missed her family. She told good stories
about dead men and women. She was happy,
in a floral print shirt and compression socks
that day. We listened patiently in metal folding-
chairs and on the quilted gold couch. She had a cabinet
like her eyes, filled with small figures of porcelain
women and angels draped in white. A blue vase.
She always looked like herself, in every photo.
Always the same smile. I imagine she smiled
when her daughters caught her talking to ghosts
between sleep and awakening some days.
My family felt guilty for knowing we knew
she would die soon. Her medications sat
in a green plastic organizer on a tiny metal table.
The silver shone with small yellow and green
painted flowers. We promised we’d visit again soon.
She died a few weeks later, January.
We knew. She was singularly ready to die.
I can see in the coffin now, her gray hair plastered
to her scalp and her waxy, paper-thin face. Green dress.
She doesn’t look like her. They never do. Never smile.
She is more herself captured in photos and letters
from the president. She is more herself in stories
of dead people she somehow recognizes.
Second workshop assignment in my poetry class. A much more simple narrative, compared to my sleep-writing. (Probably for the best.)
—velvet, with white tights and black-strap shoes.
I am in a funeral home and everything is green.
The carpet is green and maroon—flowers curl
and leaves grow over and under our feet.
My eyes meet about everyone’s crotch.
Black and brown slacks, mostly pleated.
Skirts past the knees and stockings just slightly
darker than women’s white skin. There’s a coffin
somewhere, but I can’t see inside. I can see
its dark wood. Its green velvet skirt.
Maybe we match. The dead man’s skirt and mine.
I lose myself in the crowd of legs, but find
my father’s hand with my right. I look up at a laugh,
but not my father’s. I don’t know the man,
with gray hair instead of brown, sideburns
cut in line with his cheekbones. Well hello there!
Did you think I was someone else? I tug—desperate
—two, three steps toward the dead man.
I found my parents outside. The green was bright,
no velveteen heaviness. Bronze plaques named
the bones behind them. My dad once heard of a boy
trapped overnight in a mortuary.
Just after Christmas, with chocolates separated
in clear glass bowls, my grandma told us
she wanted to die. Not in words—in memories.
She missed her family. She told good stories
about dead men and women. She was happy,
in a floral print shirt and compression socks
that day. We listened patiently in metal folding-
chairs and on the quilted gold couch. She had a cabinet
like her eyes, filled with small figures of porcelain
women and angels draped in white. A blue vase.
She always looked like herself, in every photo.
Always the same smile. I imagine she smiled
when her daughters caught her talking to ghosts
between sleep and awakening some days.
My family felt guilty for knowing we knew
she would die soon. Her medications sat
in a green plastic organizer on a tiny metal table.
The silver shone with small yellow and green
painted flowers. We promised we’d visit again soon.
She died a few weeks later, January.
We knew. She was singularly ready to die.
I can see in the coffin now, her gray hair plastered
to her scalp and her waxy, paper-thin face. Green dress.
She doesn’t look like her. They never do. Never smile.
She is more herself captured in photos and letters
from the president. She is more herself in stories
of dead people she somehow recognizes.
Second workshop assignment in my poetry class. A much more simple narrative, compared to my sleep-writing. (Probably for the best.)
Tuesday, September 9, 2014
Signatures
Fifteen hundred square miles of sidewalk
between fastened buttons, collar to navel.
A hand drawn up the outline of a neck
and seventy-six hours drawn up
on graph paper. No meticulous speckle
of freckles bleeds through, but unaccepted—
heat eats up the paper to save its soiled
underside, veins and blush sifting iron
through the ink-blots. Masterpiece in spider's pose.
Too severe to turn away, the stencil veered
to the moonlit snow and threw herself
into pieces. Forty perfect necks craned
toward the dark; Sistine hesitancies so sure.
Taken against her last breath to veer
three internal inches to the left—
the stars looked nearly ultra-violet
from these eyes, pinpricks strung over her body—
shards cast about the numbered blue margins.
A formal constraints poem for my poetry class. That class is the best. Passed this out for workshop today! XX
between fastened buttons, collar to navel.
A hand drawn up the outline of a neck
and seventy-six hours drawn up
on graph paper. No meticulous speckle
of freckles bleeds through, but unaccepted—
heat eats up the paper to save its soiled
underside, veins and blush sifting iron
through the ink-blots. Masterpiece in spider's pose.
Too severe to turn away, the stencil veered
to the moonlit snow and threw herself
into pieces. Forty perfect necks craned
toward the dark; Sistine hesitancies so sure.
Taken against her last breath to veer
three internal inches to the left—
the stars looked nearly ultra-violet
from these eyes, pinpricks strung over her body—
shards cast about the numbered blue margins.
A formal constraints poem for my poetry class. That class is the best. Passed this out for workshop today! XX
Sunday, September 7, 2014
Sweet Alyssum
She filled her living room with flowers
like they would give her new air to breathe.
I kicked the dirt like it would sing to me
if I tugged hard enough at the roots of soul
or of dandelions or morning glory impersonators
or, I don't know, maybe at my own feet buried
in the mud. We really never met. I knew her,
she didn't know me, and that's the way she liked it.
Alone in her house, I imagine she let bees
amble in and out the holes in the window-screens,
taking the scent of roses and sweet peas
on their soft bellies in their circular paths.
Something about the smell outside ate at me,
like I could almost touch the flowers, tangible,
but buried in the withered smell of fresh funeral
wreaths—left for the week after the green ground
forgives the emptiness and starts to creep in.
Suddenly with her and never with her; never touched
and never told that sunshine isn't just the here and now.
A semi-stream-of-consciousness piece from a few nights ago—they always seem a little better after leaving them alone.
like they would give her new air to breathe.
I kicked the dirt like it would sing to me
if I tugged hard enough at the roots of soul
or of dandelions or morning glory impersonators
or, I don't know, maybe at my own feet buried
in the mud. We really never met. I knew her,
she didn't know me, and that's the way she liked it.
Alone in her house, I imagine she let bees
amble in and out the holes in the window-screens,
taking the scent of roses and sweet peas
on their soft bellies in their circular paths.
Something about the smell outside ate at me,
like I could almost touch the flowers, tangible,
but buried in the withered smell of fresh funeral
wreaths—left for the week after the green ground
forgives the emptiness and starts to creep in.
Suddenly with her and never with her; never touched
and never told that sunshine isn't just the here and now.
A semi-stream-of-consciousness piece from a few nights ago—they always seem a little better after leaving them alone.
Wednesday, August 6, 2014
To burn with a swaying flame
He falls into the distance of lens flare. Corpses of color sift into silver. Sifted into silver. The light distortion was a flickered beam a million years in the making—and he holds it in his hands. He tries to imagine the day the photo was taken, but the subjects seem too unreal. Too white by faulty light meters. Too still by nature. Sifted into silver, chested and ingested for a breath. It's too easy to imagine the next moment they moved, unaware of their unreality. Their bodies relaxed into time again. He falls a distance of lens flare, 266.7 millimeters of a lifetime.
Tuesday, July 8, 2014
We have yet to exit
The white lights glare sickly off the tiles plastering the station
wall. I can almost make out my reflection in them. The crooked
squares angle me into two-by-two sections. I crane my neck and watch
the left half of my face push into other tiles. Imagine my brain
rippling through the grout and snapping back into cubes.
Impatience wrinkles through the air again, and everyone sighs. I turn and press my neck against the cool ceramic. We can all almost hear the squeak of sharpies against it, feel the smear of someone's spit over the lines to seal their handiwork. But we stood long enough not to care. Enough to think, without really attending to our thoughts. The spit would have been rushed along too. Just make sure the marker sticks and find another blank space.
Across the platform an ad proclaims WHAT IF SEEING EACH OTHER AGAIN CHANGED EVERYTHING? I want to stuff it in my purse to think about later. In different lighting.
Impatience demands attention when it's finally outrun you. The muffled weight-shifts of backpacks crawls into my ears, the clack of hard-soled shoes. It is momentarily compact and clean. Surrounded and squared off, bodies push through bodies like open air.
Impatience wrinkles through the air again, and everyone sighs. I turn and press my neck against the cool ceramic. We can all almost hear the squeak of sharpies against it, feel the smear of someone's spit over the lines to seal their handiwork. But we stood long enough not to care. Enough to think, without really attending to our thoughts. The spit would have been rushed along too. Just make sure the marker sticks and find another blank space.
Across the platform an ad proclaims WHAT IF SEEING EACH OTHER AGAIN CHANGED EVERYTHING? I want to stuff it in my purse to think about later. In different lighting.
Impatience demands attention when it's finally outrun you. The muffled weight-shifts of backpacks crawls into my ears, the clack of hard-soled shoes. It is momentarily compact and clean. Surrounded and squared off, bodies push through bodies like open air.
Static Apparatus
Architects climb the vertical lines with grace
to draw across my worries, silver and black
beams between their fingertips.
Their trapeze costumes match their pencils,
pointed and dropping into skyscraper masses,
blending with their work as the movement
dissolves. I can't decide if here, in this beautiful city,
I am pleased or I am panicked. If I am alone
in this stairwell, or if I know this address
too well to give directions for "away again".
Who hired the architects to bridge the gaps
of each 3 AM nightmare? I paid for the metal
they bend with their teeth.
to draw across my worries, silver and black
beams between their fingertips.
Their trapeze costumes match their pencils,
pointed and dropping into skyscraper masses,
blending with their work as the movement
dissolves. I can't decide if here, in this beautiful city,
I am pleased or I am panicked. If I am alone
in this stairwell, or if I know this address
too well to give directions for "away again".
Who hired the architects to bridge the gaps
of each 3 AM nightmare? I paid for the metal
they bend with their teeth.
Thursday, July 3, 2014
Untying Stillness
Our voices crack along the edges,
where they run together and then quickly
fall away. Dust on our shoulders
echoes "I love you" and we brush
our fingers in our silver words.
In all the days our silence ran over
our lips, catching a lisp and a laugh,
we built up a resistance to keeping
our arenose vows to ourselves, alone.
Mine and yours and the space of ours
cresting in the place between our lungs.
I've never loved the dust swept into sun
as much as I do when we swell the air.
where they run together and then quickly
fall away. Dust on our shoulders
echoes "I love you" and we brush
our fingers in our silver words.
In all the days our silence ran over
our lips, catching a lisp and a laugh,
we built up a resistance to keeping
our arenose vows to ourselves, alone.
Mine and yours and the space of ours
cresting in the place between our lungs.
I've never loved the dust swept into sun
as much as I do when we swell the air.
Sunday, June 8, 2014
Tuesday, May 20, 2014
For a moment I was lost in expansion
Sunset comes more slowly. It stretches past its own dip toward horizon, out of atmosphere and down again. My shadow extinguishes and comes to rest at the foot of the mountain, flickering in windows, bright gold faces to the sky. I feel space. Suddenly physical, brushing my hair with its impossible fingers and prying my lungs wide. I feel your heart beating on the other side of twenty miles, smile so close to that standard, and my body alone. Nothing but light and space and road-maps drawing us parallel on paper.
Monday, May 5, 2014
Sleeping Pill
I want to call you,
wake you up to say
I love you,
and wrap myself
in your sleepy breathing.
wake you up to say
I love you,
and wrap myself
in your sleepy breathing.
Wednesday, April 16, 2014
Astraea
She wishes moon-lit skies not linger on,
to bring her mind relief and startle open
her sleepy eyes with fated sunlight's dawn.
The stars come prick her pupils wide again
for her to heft them higher in foamy skies
and let them see themselves. She tires to wake
and carry reddened giants in her eyes.
The night to pass for beauty's tired sake.
She leaves the flickers neath her wings alone
that some may pleasure take upon their breath—
an ever-lasting fortitude soft-known
beyond her start-and-falter heart in breast.
No glimmer greater sighed the sun can give
than days: onward, upward, you live—you live.
Written for my Intellectual Traditions class.
Sonnets can be cool, but man, that took a long time... haha too tired to think of solutions to any mistakes.
Also, if Mr. Erickson reads this—according to our old forgotten deal, now you need to write a sonnet too!
to bring her mind relief and startle open
her sleepy eyes with fated sunlight's dawn.
The stars come prick her pupils wide again
for her to heft them higher in foamy skies
and let them see themselves. She tires to wake
and carry reddened giants in her eyes.
The night to pass for beauty's tired sake.
She leaves the flickers neath her wings alone
that some may pleasure take upon their breath—
an ever-lasting fortitude soft-known
beyond her start-and-falter heart in breast.
No glimmer greater sighed the sun can give
than days: onward, upward, you live—you live.
Written for my Intellectual Traditions class.
Sonnets can be cool, but man, that took a long time... haha too tired to think of solutions to any mistakes.
Also, if Mr. Erickson reads this—according to our old forgotten deal, now you need to write a sonnet too!
Wednesday, March 26, 2014
Polaroid Transfer
They say you ripple
into black dust before
your synapses can re-
connect their constellations,
trying to make up a word
that explains itself.
Fire burns through
your veins and your soft-
pounded skin—blue
turned ochre particles
falter in the sighing
light. Like you sighed
before you grasped
my cold arm in the dark.
They say you sift
through the screen before
the sky breathes white.
The mountains keep
their hands around our
staggered throats—
and you are out of here.
Neither here nor there—
who takes your postcards
when you're gone? Return
to sender, please. We have
no landscapes left to us.
They say a lot of things,
but I am left devoted.
When the sky does take
its breath, we watch
to keep your flicker
closer to our lungs.
I want to break into
the power of lightning
captured in photos.
You're the closest
I've ever gotten, and you
are just as intimately
seized into emulsion.
The cactus flowers
came more conveniently
than I thought. 227
miles isn't so far counted
in disc scratches.
You'd rather have counted
the times the road goes
black within the sky,
but we didn't have enough
disc scratches to count
so high. Pink, poked,
pressed into Encyclopaedia
porcelain pages, blossoms
just as crystalline as lemon-
drops on the rubber floor-mat.
I should have seen the cracks
clawing up your forearm.
Spread out with your veins
in the sing-song sunlight,
they took ahold with enduring
demand. Keeping up appearances—
you told me you'd eat up
the pleasantries of sunshine
for a little reality, a little raw rain.
They say your hair stands up
right on end, listening, just before
it strikes. I'll give them that.
My cells could predict thunder
before I could predict your voice
quieting our cotton T-shirts
at sunset. You'd have claimed
the smoke-filled skies
enough to singe your hair,
and they did, no red-
pen corrections to be had.
Graphite on the windowsill,
you drift without words before
the sky breathes white.
We watch to keep your flicker
closer to our lungs.
I want to break into
the power of lightning
captured in photos.
You're the closest
I've ever gotten, and you
are just as intimately
seized into emulsion.
Return to sender, please.
We have no landscapes
left to us. Nothing half-
way about voltaic distances.
My workshop piece! Shout out to Ms. Alexander and all my classmates, if they ever find this—because you're all wonderful. I feel like I get so much more out of hearing other people talk about my words than I can pry out of them on my own. You're all inspiring, and you're all amazing, diverse writers. Reading other writers makes me feel like I'm looking in on the physical progression of a person, in so many figurative and literal ways that I can't find words for. This class has offered me new ideas and opportunities to explore the unknown and my own work. Giving and taking what we need in our words. Thank you for all of that. Today was the sort of class that reminds me why I want to go into English.
into black dust before
your synapses can re-
connect their constellations,
trying to make up a word
that explains itself.
Fire burns through
your veins and your soft-
pounded skin—blue
turned ochre particles
falter in the sighing
light. Like you sighed
before you grasped
my cold arm in the dark.
They say you sift
through the screen before
the sky breathes white.
The mountains keep
their hands around our
staggered throats—
and you are out of here.
Neither here nor there—
who takes your postcards
when you're gone? Return
to sender, please. We have
no landscapes left to us.
They say a lot of things,
but I am left devoted.
When the sky does take
its breath, we watch
to keep your flicker
closer to our lungs.
I want to break into
the power of lightning
captured in photos.
You're the closest
I've ever gotten, and you
are just as intimately
seized into emulsion.
The cactus flowers
came more conveniently
than I thought. 227
miles isn't so far counted
in disc scratches.
You'd rather have counted
the times the road goes
black within the sky,
but we didn't have enough
disc scratches to count
so high. Pink, poked,
pressed into Encyclopaedia
porcelain pages, blossoms
just as crystalline as lemon-
drops on the rubber floor-mat.
I should have seen the cracks
clawing up your forearm.
Spread out with your veins
in the sing-song sunlight,
they took ahold with enduring
demand. Keeping up appearances—
you told me you'd eat up
the pleasantries of sunshine
for a little reality, a little raw rain.
They say your hair stands up
right on end, listening, just before
it strikes. I'll give them that.
My cells could predict thunder
before I could predict your voice
quieting our cotton T-shirts
at sunset. You'd have claimed
the smoke-filled skies
enough to singe your hair,
and they did, no red-
pen corrections to be had.
Graphite on the windowsill,
you drift without words before
the sky breathes white.
We watch to keep your flicker
closer to our lungs.
I want to break into
the power of lightning
captured in photos.
You're the closest
I've ever gotten, and you
are just as intimately
seized into emulsion.
Return to sender, please.
We have no landscapes
left to us. Nothing half-
way about voltaic distances.
My workshop piece! Shout out to Ms. Alexander and all my classmates, if they ever find this—because you're all wonderful. I feel like I get so much more out of hearing other people talk about my words than I can pry out of them on my own. You're all inspiring, and you're all amazing, diverse writers. Reading other writers makes me feel like I'm looking in on the physical progression of a person, in so many figurative and literal ways that I can't find words for. This class has offered me new ideas and opportunities to explore the unknown and my own work. Giving and taking what we need in our words. Thank you for all of that. Today was the sort of class that reminds me why I want to go into English.
Monday, March 24, 2014
Making fun of my diminutives
Should I hang back and watch the clouds roll across the mountains, without going to the mountains to pull them myself. Everything stays in my echoic memory and I try not to attend to it. The buzz of the refrigerator when the power flickers back on; that summer stayed sunny. But repetition comes in every snap and drawback, carelessly drawing your thoughts up in your arms before falling to red sleep. Everything is as real as it lays across your convalescent skin. 5/16" needled-out nights. He was real as his God hates his dopaminergic neurotic insomnia. Requiring or claiming more than is generally felt by others to be due: The language of inquiry, pedagogy of poetry.* Girls line up in the hall, barefoot in white. The candles fade into their hands, in and out of heavenly tapping along the carpet. I told him angels watch over his shoulder anyway. Unable to bend or be penetrated under pressure; hard: When what happens is not intentional, one can't ascribe meaning to it,
and unless what happens is necessary, one can't expect it to occur
again.* I mean untroubled by the distortions.* I mean untroubled by voiced concerns without dimes lined up between them. I choked on a dime. Language R is parallel to Language E, perhaps they cannot touch, so we fall into a translation (description) trance.* My aunts said, "Don't worry, it's just like chewing gum." Superstitions lined up on their sons' palms jammed open on the rocks, white and wide maggoting up through their fortunes. And another thing: devious, and cotton, but with sweetly analytical
hacking and hilarity (I have said, and meant, that I want people to
"get" this, and yet, with expansive sensations, I hate to "lighten up").* Fishing line and the kitchen table gone out from under their flowing fats, gathering crowds to prod at their grimaces. They don't use emergency rooms; he, on their other hands, always made sure to hide his stitches. So I just watch the clouds press their wide bodies against the mountaintops and keep my hands to myself.
*Lines from Lyn Hejinian's My Life.
Also present, dictionary.reference.com definitions of demanding and unyielding
*Lines from Lyn Hejinian's My Life.
Also present, dictionary.reference.com definitions of demanding and unyielding
Sunday, March 23, 2014
Little Miss
Her ruby eyes shine out of her sweater hem, woven in with gold thread—I’d like to weave anything close to that treasure.
She shuffled in the door to push off her boots against the floorboard and pull up another pair of socks. I like the repetition of her motion. Seven steps to the kitchen, the click of the lightswitch and soft pitter on the tiles. It moves me more than I would have liked a month ago. But here I sit and feel her sound, soft caresses across my legs. I can’t say it’s so different from the sound of car doors creaking and slamming out the window in the dark, but here I know it’s her. It’s always her here.
She flashes and I jump in the mornings, turning herself over and over until she’s gone. I wish she’d stay longer.
But she’s here now, always moving. She startled the wood with a dropped spoon, a quiet Crap. Her voice smooths over the air in arching waves. Imitation of her tongue-in-cheek phone calls is lain crooked behind me, cracked where I could never capture her imperfection in silk. Her hair shines like dewdrops in the morning. She runs her hand through the strands of sunshine and settles back in the red velvet chair, bowl propped on her knees, her feet on the ottoman and her breath in the air. Spirals of sweetness from her chilled lips.
Maybe I’m too brave to poise myself above that breath. Silver lining of all my days hanging in the air. I rest on her shoulder. She doesn’t know. She couldn’t know or we’d never be so far apart. Wool and her hair across her neck. Her beautiful neck. I move to touch her.
She’s screaming, and I’m on the floor, red in my eyes and heat in my legs. Don’t be frightened! I want to say, if only my jaw could wrap around the air like hers does! The chair is gigantic from down here. Her shrieks are larger than life. Scuttle into the bottom of the chair; the dark will return to quiet. I hope for another day where her sound stays soft beside me.
She shuffled in the door to push off her boots against the floorboard and pull up another pair of socks. I like the repetition of her motion. Seven steps to the kitchen, the click of the lightswitch and soft pitter on the tiles. It moves me more than I would have liked a month ago. But here I sit and feel her sound, soft caresses across my legs. I can’t say it’s so different from the sound of car doors creaking and slamming out the window in the dark, but here I know it’s her. It’s always her here.
She flashes and I jump in the mornings, turning herself over and over until she’s gone. I wish she’d stay longer.
But she’s here now, always moving. She startled the wood with a dropped spoon, a quiet Crap. Her voice smooths over the air in arching waves. Imitation of her tongue-in-cheek phone calls is lain crooked behind me, cracked where I could never capture her imperfection in silk. Her hair shines like dewdrops in the morning. She runs her hand through the strands of sunshine and settles back in the red velvet chair, bowl propped on her knees, her feet on the ottoman and her breath in the air. Spirals of sweetness from her chilled lips.
Maybe I’m too brave to poise myself above that breath. Silver lining of all my days hanging in the air. I rest on her shoulder. She doesn’t know. She couldn’t know or we’d never be so far apart. Wool and her hair across her neck. Her beautiful neck. I move to touch her.
She’s screaming, and I’m on the floor, red in my eyes and heat in my legs. Don’t be frightened! I want to say, if only my jaw could wrap around the air like hers does! The chair is gigantic from down here. Her shrieks are larger than life. Scuttle into the bottom of the chair; the dark will return to quiet. I hope for another day where her sound stays soft beside me.
Sleep Text 3/20/14
Fearlessness cracked
into dihedral impossibilities,
in theory never touching
again but knowing
the gaze makes us whole,
takes us whole to gray
skies that wash
in dirty water down
the page, curling the edges
like they can't quite
touch the ground either.
I've never known
myself so fragmentedly,
found in paint
chips layered on bare-
back walls, our naked
arms pressed wide in hide-
away freedom. Keep
ourselves together, but
don't let me touch your
skin and blow away
your ashes. The frantic
weight of starlight creaks
in the windows.
Inches of dust pile across
our open eyes and light
the storm-door break-
away stardom we felt
in the early hours of sun,
left alone with furniture
that lazes around and
leaves none left for our
tiredness.
into dihedral impossibilities,
in theory never touching
again but knowing
the gaze makes us whole,
takes us whole to gray
skies that wash
in dirty water down
the page, curling the edges
like they can't quite
touch the ground either.
I've never known
myself so fragmentedly,
found in paint
chips layered on bare-
back walls, our naked
arms pressed wide in hide-
away freedom. Keep
ourselves together, but
don't let me touch your
skin and blow away
your ashes. The frantic
weight of starlight creaks
in the windows.
Inches of dust pile across
our open eyes and light
the storm-door break-
away stardom we felt
in the early hours of sun,
left alone with furniture
that lazes around and
leaves none left for our
tiredness.
Monday, February 24, 2014
Habitual Fact
Raised head to stare at the sun
with closed eyes, the sky falls
in pockets of green glass.
We would not linger fixed
for so long. We would not
open our mouths to singe
our throats into submission.
I sat on the doorstep
for an hour, filling my jeans
with crushed yellow leaves.
I waited for you in the dawn,
filled up limb by limb
with stagnant blood. Fill
me up with sunlight and I would
see red for all of color, laid sliver
and cell on top of my veins.
I would sit until, god,
until we both stopped caring
for the individual geometries
of our eyelids. Blink
and be done with it.
Done with the waking hour.
You were done with color
seeping into the darkness without
your hands pushing it all in.
Palms against your eyes to push
the optic nerve to breaking
a little bit between us.
Zero, one, two, three, four.
We can't stand up so fast.
with closed eyes, the sky falls
in pockets of green glass.
We would not linger fixed
for so long. We would not
open our mouths to singe
our throats into submission.
I sat on the doorstep
for an hour, filling my jeans
with crushed yellow leaves.
I waited for you in the dawn,
filled up limb by limb
with stagnant blood. Fill
me up with sunlight and I would
see red for all of color, laid sliver
and cell on top of my veins.
I would sit until, god,
until we both stopped caring
for the individual geometries
of our eyelids. Blink
and be done with it.
Done with the waking hour.
You were done with color
seeping into the darkness without
your hands pushing it all in.
Palms against your eyes to push
the optic nerve to breaking
a little bit between us.
Zero, one, two, three, four.
We can't stand up so fast.
Sunday, February 9, 2014
We're making the transition from prose to narrative poetry in creative writing. I'm feeling much more in my enjoyable element already, so just a couple pieces I really like.
"Loving the Hands" by Julie Suk (or anything else by Julie Suk, I love everything I've read)
"Jet" by Tony Hoagland
(Also, it's amazing to me to see how far I've come. I started out five years ago with the roughest sense of meter and rhyme, writing poems with British accents. I may laugh at what I wrote between the times, but it's fun to be here. I appreciate any and all of the dedication of past Rachel to get me where I am now. I can't wait to see how I will have grown from now.)
"Loving the Hands" by Julie Suk (or anything else by Julie Suk, I love everything I've read)
"Jet" by Tony Hoagland
(Also, it's amazing to me to see how far I've come. I started out five years ago with the roughest sense of meter and rhyme, writing poems with British accents. I may laugh at what I wrote between the times, but it's fun to be here. I appreciate any and all of the dedication of past Rachel to get me where I am now. I can't wait to see how I will have grown from now.)
Wednesday, February 5, 2014
Graphomania
Close your eyes.
The shittiest taco stand is on the corner of Bard and Stanford. I’m sure that’s why I go there so much. A few words on the subject: If I haven’t had a tortilla stuffed with spicy ground beef by 10 PM, it’s hopeless. A bad night can only get worse. Freezer-burned microwave burritos just don’t hold up. I could search the city and I’d still end there.
I’d rather walk at night than day. The heat in my hand seems heavier in the dark. A reminder that if I can hold a shitty burrito in my hand and in my stomach, I can hold myself up. Plus, all the lights look nicer. Streetlights and stoplights flicker in the windows. Sunlight bears down on the sidewalks without pause, but I like the punctuation of darkness. I dunno.
“In love with daylight’s horror, I walk to the sun on molten shoes.”
I laugh.
The hour tacks itself onto 8.5 x 11 college-ruled paper. It needs all those extra blue lines to stand itself up. Chicken scratch on paper, sold for one million dollars. Dr. Evil would be so proud. His pen, on the other hand, makes $5 artwork. Smooth lines and clean dots that children would marvel at hung up on a wall. I’d like to taste it on my skin.
October 24th, that burrito was a killer. Steve had a lot more spice in his beef that day. I don’t know why I trust a guy named Steve to know anything about burritos, but I don’t think he would trust me to know what guys should know. Dumb. What guys should know. What should I know what I should know what guys should know? I walked by a wall with “YAWN” painted on it in rough strokes, smoothed out on the edges with a silver hand. I yawned. A good sign. I heard psychopaths don’t yawn by suggestion.
I shook my head and said no under my breath, spitting it over my shoulder and leaving it for the sun to singe.
He wrote just like I thought he would. Acrylic fingers and steaming ink flat and simple on the page. Beautiful, he would say, but I was scratching at it already, an itch that wouldn’t go away with an accidental spill of aloe or another kiss.
But what a kiss. It did its job and was done.
90 steps to a block, almost exactly. Sometimes it goes over too far, 94 steps and 34 cracks stepped on. My mother doesn’t worry much about me, though, I think. She kisses me on the head when it’s just what I need, but she doesn’t say much else. I obviously don’t worry much about her. I’m not careful enough with the steps I take. Stupid.
Allow me to take away the loneliness, wails in my ears and the night is gaping. Its ugly mouth gnashes its lovely teeth and garishly spits out the stars. Something in the stars tonight, I feel their heartbeat by candlelight. I’d give a million to stare with you, but you take the moment to bite and chew.
He was really sweet up until that moment. He tried to be, I could tell. His words dripped with sugar, and I loved it. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t get it all off. Crazy, crazy, crazy for you…
My dad used to wrap me up like a “burrito”. I was 10 years old but he still swaddled me like a baby and pretended to squirt hot sauce on my head. He’d tell me stories before bed. Circle up my blankets like a nest for Big Bird and lay his “burrito” in the middle of the taco salad. I laughed and I laughed. I don’t know what happened. I thought he would have known everything. I thought he would have known enough. I thought I would have known enough. Walking is hard.
On that Tuesday I walked home, like usual. Everything must have seemed fine. We had spaghetti for dinner. I thanked Dad for it and he said, “You’re welcome,” and that was that. Mom smiled and kissed me on the forehead. I went for a walk.
“I’ve always loved your handwriting. Since 8th grade.”
“That’s sweet.”
I stared at his stomach as his breaths rose and fell.
“I used to keep your papers.”
He smiled and poked my side. “You’re crazy.”
…for you. I’d give a million to stare with you, but you take the moment to bite and chew.
I want to stay on the road forever. Done with sidewalk cracks, done with the cracks on my knuckles. I want to melt into the asphalt like a crystalized snowflake unfurling. I want to be the graffiti dripping onto the curb, pink and white and black. I don’t know. Part of something bigger than me. Part of something smaller. Part of something instead of parts of me.
Just one more hour, baby. No one will miss you for one more hour.
I could miss myself for a lot more.
Blue ballpoint pen.
Red felt-tip marker.
Yellow highlighter.
Smooth and round like his shoulders in the sunlight, glistening against the window panes. Words on the paper are quiet. They lay themselves back and let themselves be. Part of the paper, leaking over the edges and bursting through Sharpie stains. The permanence is heavenly. Burned up in green fire, a Hell for heavy hearts.
His fingers became sticky. Whiteout.
A lot of people spend a lot of time looking for the right words to say, their songs say so. They found their words somewhere. They floated in the open curtains and sang sweetly on the sofa. They reclined in restful rows and they shattered in the sore silence.
I’d take those words!
He told me I was crazy for the second time. I don’t think he believed how much I loved his words, smooth and sparse and sweet. But in the end, it wasn’t him. It wasn’t him. It was me. It just always was. Just me and his words, pinned up on the wall like butterfly wings. My aunt bought a piece of art at Salvation Army. 100 blue butterfly wings in a vintage gold frame that she hung on an eastern wall to catch the sunset in their little stained scales.
Of course I know that in ten years I will look back and feel like I was alive and kicking and flapping these lips like a toddler who just learned “no”. I’d look back like I know I was more than my fingers glued to cardboard, and I will almost forget that I ever felt reduced to that at all. But that doesn’t mean it just stops. I can imagine infinity, but I won’t go inside it. Eternity. Everyone talks about God when they talk about eternity. He is ETERNAL. He is IMMUTIBLE. Or something like that.
Crazy; I did love the word. I just like pens more. I just like the words that come out of them. I just need to write it out and write him out. He wrote himself out, damn it, so all there is left to do is write.
Making the best takes conviction.
I never took you hostage like the graphite took me.
I never took what I didn’t want to do, to do to me.
Never have I ever in my long-legged life met a long-legged sailor with a long-legged wife. No, never have I ever in my long-legged life.
All these co-catastrophes colliding creations – corridor color-coding dull daft during day. Every evening escalading, frozen-feeling frost-bite freezing frost. Galleries of everything! How it tunnels into your cortex! It’s beautiful! It’s
something
isn’t it?
(My terrifying first draft piece for workshop. Gulp.)
The shittiest taco stand is on the corner of Bard and Stanford. I’m sure that’s why I go there so much. A few words on the subject: If I haven’t had a tortilla stuffed with spicy ground beef by 10 PM, it’s hopeless. A bad night can only get worse. Freezer-burned microwave burritos just don’t hold up. I could search the city and I’d still end there.
I’d rather walk at night than day. The heat in my hand seems heavier in the dark. A reminder that if I can hold a shitty burrito in my hand and in my stomach, I can hold myself up. Plus, all the lights look nicer. Streetlights and stoplights flicker in the windows. Sunlight bears down on the sidewalks without pause, but I like the punctuation of darkness. I dunno.
“In love with daylight’s horror, I walk to the sun on molten shoes.”
I laugh.
The hour tacks itself onto 8.5 x 11 college-ruled paper. It needs all those extra blue lines to stand itself up. Chicken scratch on paper, sold for one million dollars. Dr. Evil would be so proud. His pen, on the other hand, makes $5 artwork. Smooth lines and clean dots that children would marvel at hung up on a wall. I’d like to taste it on my skin.
October 24th, that burrito was a killer. Steve had a lot more spice in his beef that day. I don’t know why I trust a guy named Steve to know anything about burritos, but I don’t think he would trust me to know what guys should know. Dumb. What guys should know. What should I know what I should know what guys should know? I walked by a wall with “YAWN” painted on it in rough strokes, smoothed out on the edges with a silver hand. I yawned. A good sign. I heard psychopaths don’t yawn by suggestion.
I shook my head and said no under my breath, spitting it over my shoulder and leaving it for the sun to singe.
He wrote just like I thought he would. Acrylic fingers and steaming ink flat and simple on the page. Beautiful, he would say, but I was scratching at it already, an itch that wouldn’t go away with an accidental spill of aloe or another kiss.
But what a kiss. It did its job and was done.
90 steps to a block, almost exactly. Sometimes it goes over too far, 94 steps and 34 cracks stepped on. My mother doesn’t worry much about me, though, I think. She kisses me on the head when it’s just what I need, but she doesn’t say much else. I obviously don’t worry much about her. I’m not careful enough with the steps I take. Stupid.
Allow me to take away the loneliness, wails in my ears and the night is gaping. Its ugly mouth gnashes its lovely teeth and garishly spits out the stars. Something in the stars tonight, I feel their heartbeat by candlelight. I’d give a million to stare with you, but you take the moment to bite and chew.
He was really sweet up until that moment. He tried to be, I could tell. His words dripped with sugar, and I loved it. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t get it all off. Crazy, crazy, crazy for you…
My dad used to wrap me up like a “burrito”. I was 10 years old but he still swaddled me like a baby and pretended to squirt hot sauce on my head. He’d tell me stories before bed. Circle up my blankets like a nest for Big Bird and lay his “burrito” in the middle of the taco salad. I laughed and I laughed. I don’t know what happened. I thought he would have known everything. I thought he would have known enough. I thought I would have known enough. Walking is hard.
On that Tuesday I walked home, like usual. Everything must have seemed fine. We had spaghetti for dinner. I thanked Dad for it and he said, “You’re welcome,” and that was that. Mom smiled and kissed me on the forehead. I went for a walk.
“I’ve always loved your handwriting. Since 8th grade.”
“That’s sweet.”
I stared at his stomach as his breaths rose and fell.
“I used to keep your papers.”
He smiled and poked my side. “You’re crazy.”
…for you. I’d give a million to stare with you, but you take the moment to bite and chew.
I want to stay on the road forever. Done with sidewalk cracks, done with the cracks on my knuckles. I want to melt into the asphalt like a crystalized snowflake unfurling. I want to be the graffiti dripping onto the curb, pink and white and black. I don’t know. Part of something bigger than me. Part of something smaller. Part of something instead of parts of me.
Just one more hour, baby. No one will miss you for one more hour.
I could miss myself for a lot more.
Blue ballpoint pen.
Red felt-tip marker.
Yellow highlighter.
Smooth and round like his shoulders in the sunlight, glistening against the window panes. Words on the paper are quiet. They lay themselves back and let themselves be. Part of the paper, leaking over the edges and bursting through Sharpie stains. The permanence is heavenly. Burned up in green fire, a Hell for heavy hearts.
His fingers became sticky. Whiteout.
A lot of people spend a lot of time looking for the right words to say, their songs say so. They found their words somewhere. They floated in the open curtains and sang sweetly on the sofa. They reclined in restful rows and they shattered in the sore silence.
I’d take those words!
He told me I was crazy for the second time. I don’t think he believed how much I loved his words, smooth and sparse and sweet. But in the end, it wasn’t him. It wasn’t him. It was me. It just always was. Just me and his words, pinned up on the wall like butterfly wings. My aunt bought a piece of art at Salvation Army. 100 blue butterfly wings in a vintage gold frame that she hung on an eastern wall to catch the sunset in their little stained scales.
Of course I know that in ten years I will look back and feel like I was alive and kicking and flapping these lips like a toddler who just learned “no”. I’d look back like I know I was more than my fingers glued to cardboard, and I will almost forget that I ever felt reduced to that at all. But that doesn’t mean it just stops. I can imagine infinity, but I won’t go inside it. Eternity. Everyone talks about God when they talk about eternity. He is ETERNAL. He is IMMUTIBLE. Or something like that.
Crazy; I did love the word. I just like pens more. I just like the words that come out of them. I just need to write it out and write him out. He wrote himself out, damn it, so all there is left to do is write.
Making the best takes conviction.
I never took you hostage like the graphite took me.
I never took what I didn’t want to do, to do to me.
Never have I ever in my long-legged life met a long-legged sailor with a long-legged wife. No, never have I ever in my long-legged life.
All these co-catastrophes colliding creations – corridor color-coding dull daft during day. Every evening escalading, frozen-feeling frost-bite freezing frost. Galleries of everything! How it tunnels into your cortex! It’s beautiful! It’s
something
isn’t it?
(My terrifying first draft piece for workshop. Gulp.)
Saturday, February 1, 2014
Singularity
A picture is worth no more than your right eye. $726 if it’s not over-worn, maybe a dozen more in it if it’s the one that led you by the ray to us. 7 AM on a Tuesday and we unroll the morning. Yellow and red settle at the mountaintops and run before us into gray. It’s a beautiful day to be alive, we say.
You don’t even know we’re there. You stare into the mirror and mull your face over. Pull at the dark spots under your eyes. Heavy weights drag you down to sleep, but you fight your eyes to stare at the fluorescent bathroom bulbs. The light’s still there in the back of your blink. Everything again exists as you last saw it. Don’t worry about a thing.
The problem with pictures—they deteriorate so quickly. On good paper they still take in sunspots. On a good mind they don’t survive past 71. We need your eyes. You’re not cornered in the dark—you could close your eyes and see infinity. But we need that from you. Please.
I didn’t call myself a collective until I saw the edge. Nothingness can’t exist as you know it. I cried and became blind by the poison of my tears. And I saw again. We saw.
Here. I hold my hands out to you; we watch and wait. You turn the paper over by the darkened edges. Sick on your shoes. It’s a shame you can’t appreciate it yet, but you will. We hold you in our arms. You don’t even feel it. $620 to your bank account a week later; not a remarkable specimen, but we’ll take it.
There’s nothing quite like the mirror image of ourselves, poking at our sleepy faces. But no one really cares what there is to see without observers. So we watch you and make you worth something. Watch us watch you.
It’s a beautiful day to be alive, we say. Say: A fine, bright day to be alive.
I have trouble finding the balance between giving my readers too much and too little (usually the latter). Anything to figure out what readers need to know to draw their own conclusions would be helpful!
(Another creative writing draft. Workshop on Wednesday, and I haven't written a thing! Writing is fun, but also stressful...)
You don’t even know we’re there. You stare into the mirror and mull your face over. Pull at the dark spots under your eyes. Heavy weights drag you down to sleep, but you fight your eyes to stare at the fluorescent bathroom bulbs. The light’s still there in the back of your blink. Everything again exists as you last saw it. Don’t worry about a thing.
The problem with pictures—they deteriorate so quickly. On good paper they still take in sunspots. On a good mind they don’t survive past 71. We need your eyes. You’re not cornered in the dark—you could close your eyes and see infinity. But we need that from you. Please.
I didn’t call myself a collective until I saw the edge. Nothingness can’t exist as you know it. I cried and became blind by the poison of my tears. And I saw again. We saw.
Here. I hold my hands out to you; we watch and wait. You turn the paper over by the darkened edges. Sick on your shoes. It’s a shame you can’t appreciate it yet, but you will. We hold you in our arms. You don’t even feel it. $620 to your bank account a week later; not a remarkable specimen, but we’ll take it.
There’s nothing quite like the mirror image of ourselves, poking at our sleepy faces. But no one really cares what there is to see without observers. So we watch you and make you worth something. Watch us watch you.
It’s a beautiful day to be alive, we say. Say: A fine, bright day to be alive.
I have trouble finding the balance between giving my readers too much and too little (usually the latter). Anything to figure out what readers need to know to draw their own conclusions would be helpful!
(Another creative writing draft. Workshop on Wednesday, and I haven't written a thing! Writing is fun, but also stressful...)
Wednesday, January 15, 2014
In Considerate Memory
The woman walks home before the
street lights turn on. Her keys shake
slightly in her fingers, bumps rising
on her arms.
That morning the sun had fallen
across her feet, red in December air,
curling through the window in soft
breaths. Cold water remembers the
contours of her heavy thighs. Her
hair fell to her shoulders and stuck to
her neck. By afternoon she is
remembered in forkfuls of sweet
beans. The can lay on its side in the
bin. It was nearly empty, the taste of
tin in her mouth. By evening she is
remembered in a dozen white roses,
wrapped and laid on the counter. Her
fingers steadied their petals, and her
smile steadied the young man buying
them. $29.99, check. Thank you.
They were creased between five
words and ten fingers.
She remembers the beams through
the glassless windows she passes.
Fifteen minutes under the unborn
streetlights. They would be yellow
and bitter white.
In lieu of sending flowers, please
watch for the bloom of snow in
summer.
First creative response for my creative writing class this semester! Inspired in part by "Obit" by Ted Sanders.
street lights turn on. Her keys shake
slightly in her fingers, bumps rising
on her arms.
That morning the sun had fallen
across her feet, red in December air,
curling through the window in soft
breaths. Cold water remembers the
contours of her heavy thighs. Her
hair fell to her shoulders and stuck to
her neck. By afternoon she is
remembered in forkfuls of sweet
beans. The can lay on its side in the
bin. It was nearly empty, the taste of
tin in her mouth. By evening she is
remembered in a dozen white roses,
wrapped and laid on the counter. Her
fingers steadied their petals, and her
smile steadied the young man buying
them. $29.99, check. Thank you.
They were creased between five
words and ten fingers.
She remembers the beams through
the glassless windows she passes.
Fifteen minutes under the unborn
streetlights. They would be yellow
and bitter white.
In lieu of sending flowers, please
watch for the bloom of snow in
summer.
First creative response for my creative writing class this semester! Inspired in part by "Obit" by Ted Sanders.
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