"& then afterward" by Nate Pritts

(i)

I woke to early sun:
burning of fire, & then afterward.

We kept reaching
through the long night.


(ii)

Afterward,

the small deceptions
we allow ourselves:
a sickness, unchecked.
Like this:


(iii)

& first sunlight.
Snow continues.
I could never close my eyes to light.

But there was no light
& you looked like night.


(iv)

There must be a pattern,

snow slow-dropping in wet clusters
through the wooden arms
of empty trees.


(v)

Sun fingering its way
through branches

I’d hung my life on.
We don’t matter a bit; realization
forces our eyes closed—


(vi)

A sickness, unchecked, like this.
I’d hung my life on

burning of fire, & then afterward.


(vii)

Our arms together
we searched for patterns

& sunlight.


(viii)

Our arms laced together,
pointing together
over wind-tossed grasses.

Us: waist deep in night blue.


(ix)

There was no light.
You pointed.


(x)

Sun overhead,
you pointed
to the wind-tossed grasses.
This is a memory now.


(xi)

Together in that first sun,
so vivid:
there must be a pattern

I’d hung my life on.


(xii)

Snow dropped in clusters,
staggered & jagged.

We don’t matter a bit.


(xiii)

Reflected in lake water:
all these things I’ll forget.


(xiv)

Our arms together

but we keep reaching
over the wind-tossed grasses.


(xv)

Black smoke curling:

the importance
of night-blue field grass,


(xvi)

the importance of.

The stars are close; we try to hold together.


(xvii)

All this ends
but until then:

burning of fire, & then afterward.
The stars are close; we try to hold.
Such distance between the fallen!


(xviii)

Burning of fire, & then afterward.

You pointed.


(xix)

Grasses silently fold,
a sickness, unchecked, reaching. Like this.

Wooden arms of trees
long since emptied.


(xx)

This ends in darkness,
& all the stars within reach,
& other constellations.

Nate Pritts, "& then afterward" from The Wonderfull Yeare (a shepherd’s calendar). Copyright © 2009 by Nate Pritts.

Leave Taking by Louise Bogan

I do not know where either of us can turn

Just at first, waking from the sleep of each other.

I do not know how we can bear

The river struck by the gold plummet of the moon,

Or many trees shaken together in the darkness.

We shall wish not to be alone

And that love were not dispersed and set free—

Though you defeat me,

And I be heavy upon you.

But like earth heaped over the heart

Is love grown perfect.

Like a shell over the beat of life

Is love perfect to the last.

So let it be the same

Whether we turn to the dark or to the kiss of another;

Let us know this for leavetaking,

That I may not be heavy upon you,

That you may blind me no more.

You Worry Too Much - Rumi

Oh soul,
you worry too much.
Look at yourself,
what you have become.
You are now a field of sugar canes,
why show that sour face to me?
You have tamed the
winged horse of Love.
Of a death of a donkey,
why do you worry?
You say that I keep you warm inside.
Then why this cold sigh?
You have gone to the roof of heavens.
Of this world of dust, why do you worry?
Oh soul,
you worry too much.
Since you met me,
you have become a master singer,
and are now a skilled wrangler,
you can untangle any knot.
Of life's little leash
why do you worry?
Your arms are heavy
with treasures of all kinds.
About poverty,
why do you worry?
You are Joseph,
beautiful, strong,
steadfast in your belief,
all of Egypt has become drunk
because of you.
Of those who are blind to your beauty,
and deaf to your songs,
why do you worry?
Oh soul,
you worry too much.
You say that your housemate is the
Heart of Love,
she is your best friend.
You say that you are the heat of
the oven of every Lover.
You say that you are the servant of
Ali's magical sword, Zolfaghar.
Of any little dagger
why do you still worry?
Oh soul,
you worry too much.
You have seen your own strength.
You have seen your own beauty.
You have seen your golden wings.
Of anything less,
why do you worry?
You are in truth
the soul, of the soul, of the soul.
You are the security,
the shelter of the spirit of Lovers.
Oh the sultan of sultans,
of any other king,
why do you worry?
Be silent, like a fish,
and go into that pleasant sea.
You are in deep waters now,
of life's blazing fire.
Why do you worry?

From: 'Hush Don't Say Anything to God: Passionate Poems of Rumi'
Translated by Sharam Shiva

My newest project!

Dear Readers,

I have started a new project. Please check it out and spread the word!

Katie.

p.s. Sorry for the lack of poem posting of late. I have been a) getting used to not being in school and b) beginning many long-term projects for which I previously did not have time. I promise to be back soon!

Goodbye. (Again and again.)

Stepping Backward - Adrienne Rich

Good-by to you whom I shall see tomorrow,
Next year and when I'm fifty; still good-by.
This is the leave we never really take.
If you were dead or gone to live in China
The event might draw your stature in my mind.
I should be forced to look upon you whole
The way we look upon the things we lose.
We see each other daily and in segments;
Parting might make us meet anew, entire.

You asked me once, and I could give no answer,
How far dare we throw off the daily ruse,
Official treacheries of face and name,
Have out our true identity? I could hazard
An answer now, if you are asking still.
We are a small and lonely human race
Showing no sign of mastering solitude
Out on this stony planet that we farm.
The most that we can do for one another
Is let our blunders and our blind mischances
Argue a certain brusque abrupt compassion.
We might as well be truthful. I should say
They're luckiest who know they're not unique;
But only art or common interchange
Can teach that kindest truth. And even art
Can only hint at what disturbed a Melville
Or calmed a Mahler's frenzy; you and I
Still look from separate windows every morning
Upon the same white daylight in the square.

And when we come into each other's rooms
Once in awhile, encumbered and self-conscious,
We hover awkwardly about the threshold
And usually regret the visit later.
Perhaps the harshest fact is, only lovers--
Unlearn that clumsiness of rare intrusion
And let each other freely come and go.
Most of us shut too quickly into cupboards
The margin-scribbled books, the dried geranium,
The penny horoscope, letters never mailed.
The door may open, but the room is altered;
Not the same room we look from night and day.

It takes a late and slowly blooming wisdom
To learn that those we marked infallible
Are tragi-comic stumblers like ourselves.
The knowledge breeds reserve. We walk on tiptoe,
Demanding more than we know how to render.
Two-edged discovery hunts us finally down;
The human act will make us real again,
And then perhaps we come to know each other.

Let us return to imperfection's school.
No longer wandering after Plato's ghost,
Seeking the garden where all fruit is flawless,
We must at last renounce that ultimate blue
And take a walk in other kinds of weather.
The sourest apple makes its wry announcement
That imperfection has a certain tang.
Maybe we shouldn't turn our pockets out
To the last crumb or lingering bit of fluff,
But all we can confess of what we are
Has in it the defeat of isolation--
If not our own, then someone's, anyway.

So I come back to saying this good-by,
A sort of ceremony of my own,
This stepping backward for another glance.
Perhaps you'll say we need no ceremony,
Because we know each other, crack and flaw,
Like two irregular stones that fit together.
Yet still good-by, because we live by inches
And only sometimes see the full dimension.
Your stature's one I want to memorize--
Your whole level of being, to impose
On any other comers, man or woman.
I'd ask them that they carry what they are
With your particular bearing, as you wear
The flaws that make you both yourself and human.

Adrienne Rich, The Fact of a Doorframe:
Poems Selected and New 1950-1984

Butchering Crabs by Henry Carlile

All day we smashed and swore,
filling the brine tanks
with twitching claws and legs,
white belly meat,
dropping the entrails
and deep-dish violet shells
down a slime hole to the bay.
Even Hawk, our best butcher,
got pinched.
Those claws cut
through our heaviest gloves.
When we broke them off
they clamped down tighter.

"Take that, you buckethead!"
the shell shattering
like crockery.
"You'll never bite another
Indian!"
Stabbing his hands
into that cage of maniacs,
clattering and seething,
bubbling at the mouths,
glare of stalked eyes,
claws like open traps,
he would snap one up
and in one smooth movement
break it over the knife.

She dips her fork
into the cocktail,
lifts it to her perfect face
and eats.
Over miles of white tablecloth
the bits and pieces fall.

He lived in a shack
with newspaper curtains,
drove home each night
crabby and skidding.
On the third day
they gave me my check:
"Too slow, sonny."
But Hawk was fast,
he was faster than life.

Odes by Ricardo Reis (translated by Edouard Roditi)

1.

Of the gardens of Adonis, Lydia, I love

Most of all those fugitive roses

         That on the day they are born,

         That very day, must also die.

Eternal, for them, the light of day:

They're born when the sun is already high

         And die before Apollo's course

         Across the visible sky is run.

We too, of our lives, must make one day:

We never know, my Lydia, nor want

        To know of nights before or after

        The little while that we may last.

2.

To be great, be whole: nothing that's you

         Should you exaggerate or exclude.

In each thing, be all. Give all you are

         In the least you ever do.

The whole moon, because it rides so high,

         Is reflected in each pool.

A Blessing - James Wright

Just off the Highway to Rochester, Minnesota
Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.
And the eyes of those two Indian ponies
Darken with kindness.
They have come gladly out of the willows
To welcome my friend and me.
We step over the barbed wire into the pasture
Where they have been grazing all day, alone.
They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness
That we have come.
They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.
There is no loneliness like theirs.
At home once more,
They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.
I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,
For she has walked over to me
And nuzzled my left hand.
She is black and white,
Her mane falls wild on her forehead,
And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear
That is delicate as the skin over a girl's wrist.
Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.

Uggggh. This guy is talent plus genius plus changing my world.

You may have noticed that I read a shit ton of poetry. I cannot get enough. I eat poems three times a day, put them under my pillow, carry them in my pockets....But I've been introduced to this guy and his poems from this book by my friend (who shall remain anon unless he chooses otherwise*).

I just finished reading this poem and now I don't know whether to break all of my pens and pencils and shred every piece of paper in my house or scream, sing, shout or just wander around the streets dazed and sunken. I have to say that this guy may be my new favorite (all time favorite), favorite of ever poet. And that is saying a lot, considering the amount of poetry I consume.

I want to eat his poems.

I have a serious crush on his poems.

I want to carry his poems around with me for all time.

(You might think I'm exaggerating. Go read the poem I linked and then try to close your mouth.)

*He chose otherwise. A huge thanks to this guy for introducing me to Mr. Siken.

Domestic by Carl Phillips

If, when studying road atlases
while taking, as you call it, your
morning dump, you shout down to
me names like Miami City, Franconia,
Cancún, as places for you to take
me to from here, can I help it if

all I can think is things that are
stupid, like he loves me he loves me
not? I don’t think so. No more
than, some mornings, waking to your
hands around me, and remembering
these are the fingers, the hands I’ve

over and over given myself to, I can
stop myself from wondering does that
mean they’re the same I’ll grow
old with. Yesterday, in the café I
keep meaning to show you, I thought
this is how I’ll die maybe, alone,

somewhere too far away from wherever
you are then, my heart racing from
espresso and too many cigarettes,
my head down on the table’s cool
marble, and the ceiling fan turning
slowly above me, like fortune, the

part of fortune that’s half-wished-
for only—it did not seem the worst
way. I thought this is another of
those things I’m always forgetting
to tell you, or don’t choose to
tell you, or I tell you but only

in the same way, each morning, I
keep myself from saying too loud I
love you until the moment you flush
the toilet, then I say it, when the
rumble of water running down through
the house could mean anything: flood,

your feet descending the stairs any
moment; any moment the whole world,
all I want of the world, coming down.

Moonlight: Chickens On The Road by Robert Wrigley

Called out of dream by the pitch and screech,
I awoke to see my mother’s hair
set free of its pincurls, springing out
into the still and hurtling air
above the front seat and just as suddenly gone.
The space around us twisted,
and in the instant before the crash
I heard the bubbling of the chickens,
the homely racket they make at all speeds,
signifying calm, resignation, oblivion.

And I listened. All through the slash
and clatter, the rake of steel, shatter of glass,
I listened, and what came
was a blizzard moan in the wind, a wail
of wreckage, severed hoses and lives,
a storm of loose feathers, and in the final
whirl approximating calm, the cluck
and fracas of the birds. I crawled
on hands and knees where a window should
have been and rose uneven

in November dusk. Wind blew
a snow of down, and rows of it quivered along
the shoulder. One thin stream of blood
oozed, flocked in feathers.
This was in the Ozarks, on a road curving miles
around Missouri, and as far as I could
see, no light flickered through the timber,
no mail box leaned the flag
of itself toward pavement, no cars
seemed ever likely to come along.

So I walked, circled the darkening disaster
my life had come to, and cried.
I cried for my family there,
knotted in the snarl of metal and glass;
for the farmer, looking dead, half in
and half out of his windshield; and for myself,
ambling barefoot through the jeweled debris,
glass slitting little blood-stars in my soles,
my arm hung loose at the elbow
and whispering its prophecies of pain.

Around and around the tilted car
and the steaming truck, around the heap
of exploded crates, the smears and small hunks
of chicken and straw. Through
an hour of loneliness and fear
I walked, in the almost black of Ozark night,
the moon just now burning into Missouri. Behind me,
the chickens followed my lead,
some fully upright, pecking

the dim pavement for suet or seed,
some half-hobbled by their wounds, worthless wings
fluttering in the effort. The faintest
light turned their feathers phosphorescent,
and as I watched they came on, as though they believed
me some savior, some highwayman
or commando come to save them the last night
of their clucking lives. This, they must have
believed, was the end they’d always heard of,
this the rendering more efficient than the axe,

the execution more anonymous than
a wringing arm. I walked on, no longer crying,
and soon the amiable and distracted chattering came
again, a sound like chuckling, or the backward suck
of hard laughter. And we walked
to the cadence their clucking called,
a small boy towing a cloud around a scene
of death, coming round and round
like a dream, or a mountain road,
like a pincurl, like pulse, like life.

Graves We Filled Before the Fire by Gabrielle Calvocoressi

Some lose children in lonelier ways:
tetanus, hard falls, stubborn fevers

that soak the bedclothes five nights running.
Our two boys went out to skate, broke

through the ice like battleships, came back
to us in canvas bags: curled

fossils held fast in ancient stone,
four hands reaching. Then two

sad beds wide enough for planting
wheat or summer-squash but filled

with boys, a barren crop. Our lives
stripped clean as oxen bones.

Werner Herzog reads Madeline

This is courtesy of The Rejectionist. Enjoy!

Straight Razor by Randall Mann

He slid the stiff blade up to my ear:
Oh, fear,

this should have been thirst, a cheapening act.
But I lacked,

as usual, the crucial disbelief. Sticky, cold,
a billfold

wet in my mouth, wrists bound by his belt,
I felt

like the boy in a briny night pool, he who found
the drowned

body, yet still somehow swam with an unknown joy.
That boy.

The Fall of 1992 by Randall Mann

Gainesville, Florida
An empire of moss,
dead yellow, and carapace:
that was the season
of gnats, amyl nitrate, and goddamn
rain; of the gator in the fake lake rolling

his silverish eyes;
of vice; of Erotica,
give it up and let
me have my way. And the gin-soaked dread
that an acronym was festering inside.

Love was a doorknob
statement, a breakneck goodbye—
and the walk of shame
without shame, the hair disheveled, curl
of Kools, and desolate birds like ampersands...

I re-did my face
in the bar bathroom, above
the urinal trough.
I liked it rough. From behind the stall,
Lady Pearl slurred the words: Don’t hold out for love.

Vespers [In your extended absence, you permit me] by Louise Glück

In your extended absence, you permit me
use of earth, anticipating
some return on investment. I must report
failure in my assignment, principally
regarding the tomato plants.
I think I should not be encouraged to grow
tomatoes. Or, if I am, you should withhold
the heavy rains, the cold nights that come
so often here, while other regions get
twelve weeks of summer. All this
belongs to you: on the other hand,
I planted the seeds, I watched the first shoots
like wings tearing the soil, and it was my heart
broken by the blight, the black spot so quickly
multiplying in the rows. I doubt
you have a heart, in our understanding of
that term. You who do not discriminate
between the dead and the living, who are, in consequence,
immune to foreshadowing, you may not know
how much terror we bear, the spotted leaf,
the red leaves of the maple falling
even in August, in early darkness: I am responsible
for these vines.

Portrait of a Figure near Water by Jane Kenyon

Rebuked, she turned and ran
uphill to the barn. Anger, the inner
arsonist, held a match to her brain.
She observed her life: against her will
it survived the unwavering flame.

The barn was empty of animals.
Only a swallow tilted
near the beams, and bats
hung from the rafters
the roof sagged between.

Her breath became steady
where, years past, the farmer cooled
the big tin amphoræ of milk.
The stone trough was still
filled with water: she watched it
and received its calm.

So it is when we retreat in anger:
we think we burn alone
and there is no balm.
Then water enters, though it makes
no sound.

Not Waving but Drowning by Stevie Smith

Nobody heard him, the dead man,   

But still he lay moaning:

I was much further out than you thought   

And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking

And now he’s dead

It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,   

They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always   

(Still the dead one lay moaning)   

I was much too far out all my life   

And not waving but drowning.

The Deathwatch Beetle by Linda Pastan

1.

A cardinal hurls itself

at my window all morning long,   

trying so hard to penetrate

its own reflection

I almost let it in myself,

though once I saw   

another red bird, crazed

by the walls of a room,   

spatter its feathers   

all over the house.

2.

My whole childhood is coming apart,   

the last stitches

about to be ripped out

with your death,

and I will be left—ridiculous,

to write

condolence letters

to myself.

3.

The deathwatch beetle

earned its name

not from its ugliness

or our terror

of insects

but simply because of the sound   

it makes, ticking.

4.

When your spirit

perfects itself,

will it escape

out of a nostril,

or through the spiral

passage of an ear?

Or is it even now battering   

against your thin skull, wild   

to get through, blood brother   

to this crimson bird?

WCW.

Between Walls

by William Carlos Williams

the back wings

of the

hospital where

nothing

will grow lie

cinders

in which shine

the broken

pieces of a green

bottle

 

~

Dedication for a Plot of Ground

by William Carlos Williams

This plot of ground

facing the waters of this inlet

is dedicated to the living presence of

Emily Dickinson Wellcome

who was born in England; married;

lost her husband and with

her five year old son

sailed for New York in a two-master;

was driven to the Azores;

ran adrift on Fire Island shoal,

met her second husband

in a Brooklyn boarding house,

went with him to Puerto Rico

bore three more children, lost

her second husband, lived hard

for eight years in St. Thomas,

Puerto Rico, San Domingo, followed

the oldest son to New York,

lost her daughter, lost her "baby,"

seized the two boys of

the oldest son by the second marriage

mothered them—they being

motherless—fought for them

against the other grandmother

and the aunts, brought them here

summer after summer, defended

herself here against thieves,

storms, sun, fire,

against flies, against girls

that came smelling about, against

drought, against weeds, storm-tides,

neighbors, weasels that stole her chickens,

against the weakness of her own hands,

against the growing strength of

the boys, against wind, against

the stones, against trespassers,

against rents, against her own mind.

She grubbed this earth with her own hands,

domineered over this grass plot,

blackguarded her oldest son

into buying it, lived here fifteen years,

attained a final loneliness and—

If you can bring nothing to this place

but your carcass, keep out.

Break.

 I got stuck on day eleven of the thirty days of poetry, so I went back to reading poetry. I found this today and there is something about it that I am just totally relating to today. I love Louise Gluck and her poetry always does something to me. Enjoy!

The Empty Glass by Louise Glück

I asked for much; I received much.

I asked for much; I received little, I received

next to nothing.

And between? A few umbrellas opened indoors.

A pair of shoes by mistake on the kitchen table.

O wrong, wrong—it was my nature. I was

hard-hearted, remote. I was

selfish, rigid to the point of tyranny.

But I was always that person, even in early childhood.

Small, dark-haired, dreaded by the other children.

I never changed. Inside the glass, the abstract

tide of fortune turned

from high to low overnight.

Was it the sea? Responding, maybe,

to celestial force? To be safe,

I prayed. I tried to be a better person.

Soon it seemed to me that what began as terror

and matured into moral narcissism

might have become in fact

actual human growth. Maybe

this is what my friends meant, taking my hand,

telling me they understood

the abuse, the incredible shit I accepted,

implying (so I once thought) I was a little sick

to give so much for so little.

Whereas they meant I was good (clasping my hand intensely)—

a good friend and person, not a creature of pathos.

I was not pathetic! I was writ large,

like a queen or a saint.

Well, it all makes for interesting conjecture.

And it occurs to me that what is crucial is to believe

in effort, to believe some good will come of simply trying,

a good completely untainted by the corrupt initiating impulse

to persuade or seduce—

What are we without this?

Whirling in the dark universe,

alone, afraid, unable to influence fate—

What do we have really?

Sad tricks with ladders and shoes,

tricks with salt, impurely motivated recurring

attempts to build character.

What do we have to appease the great forces?

And I think in the end this was the question

that destroyed Agamemnon, there on the beach,

the Greek ships at the ready, the sea

invisible beyond the serene harbor, the future

lethal, unstable: he was a fool, thinking

it could be controlled. He should have said

I have nothing, I am at your mercy.

Haitus.

It's NaPoWriMo, y'all. I will be switching over to http://pseudoencephalitic.blogspot.com/ for the month so I can participate. Be sure to hop on over and click the "follow" button so you can track my progress.

I may keep blogging random thingies over here,  but for now I think I'm putting up the "Be back soon" sign. See you in May!

Body and Soul by Sharon Bryan*

They grow up together
but they aren't even fraternal

twins, they quarrel a lot
about where to go and what

to do, the body complains
about having to carry

the soul everywhere as if
it were some helpless cripple,

and the soul snipes that it can go
places the body never dreamed of,

then they quarrel over which one of them
does the dreaming, but the truth is,

they can't live without each other and
they both know it, anima, animosity,

the diaphragm pumps like a bellows
and the soul pulls out all the stops—

sings at the top of its lungs, laughs
at its little jokes, it would like

to think it has the upper hand
and can leave whenever it wants—

but only as long as it knows
the door will be unlocked

when it sneaks back home before
the sun comes up, and when the body

says where have you been, the soul
says, with a smirk, I was at the end

of my tether, and it was, like a diver
on the ocean floor or an astronaut

admiring the view from outside
the mother ship, and like them

it would be lost without its air
supply and protective clothing,

the body knows that and begins
to hum, I get along without you

very well, and the soul says, Listen
to that, you can't sing worth a lick

without me, they'll go on bickering
like this until death do them part—

and then, even if the soul seems to float
above the body for a moment,

like a flame above a candle, pinch
the wick and it disappears.

* Did you notice how this poem is broken up into stanzas of only two lines? It matches the content so beautifully....

Better or Worse by Heather McHugh

I.

Daily, the kindergarteners
passed my porch. I loved
their likeness and variety,
their selves in line like little
monosyllables, but huggable—
I wasn't meant

to grab them, ever,
up into actual besmooches or down
into grubbiest tumbles, my lot was not
to have them, in the flesh.
Was it better or worse to let
their lovability go by untouched, and just
watch over their river of ever-
inbraiding relations? I wouldn't
mother them or teach. We couldn't be
each other's others; maybe,
at removes, each other's each.
II.

Each toddler had a hand-hold on
a loop of rope, designed to haul
the whole school onward
in the sidewalk stream—
like pickerel through freshets,
at the pull of something else's will, the children
spun and bobbled, three years old and four
(or were they little drunken Buddhas,
buoyant, plump?). They looked
now to the right, now to the sky, and now
toward nothing (nothing was too small)—
they followed a thread of destination,
chain of command, order of actual rope that led

to what? Who knew?

For here and now in one child's eye there was a yellow truck,
and in another's was a burning star; but from my own perspective,
overhead, adult, where trucks and suns had lost their luster,
they were one whole baby-rush toward
a target, toward the law
of targets, fledge
in the wake of an arrowhead;

a bull's-eye bloomed, a red
eight-sided sign. What
did I wish them?
Nothing I foresaw.

On the Eve of a Birthday by Timothy Steele

As my Scotch, spared the water, blondly sloshes
About its tumbler, and gay manic flame
Is snapping in the fireplace, I grow youthful:
I realize that calendars aren’t truthful
And that for all of my grand unsuccesses
External causes are to blame.

And if at present somewhat destitute,
I plan to alter, prove myself more able,
And suavely stroll into the coming years
As into rooms with thick rugs, chandeliers,
And colorfully pyramided fruit
On linened lengths of table.


At times I fear the future won’t reward
My failures with sufficient compensation,
But dump me, aging, in a garret room
Appointed with twilit, slant-ceilinged gloom
And a lone bulb depending from a cord
Suggestive of self-strangulation.


Then, too, I have bad dreams, in one of which
A cowled, scythe-bearing figure beckons me.
Dark plains glow at his back: it seems I’ve died,
And my soul, weighed and judged, has qualified
For an extended, hyper-sultry hitch
Down in eternity.


Such fears and dreams, however, always pass.
And gazing from my window at the dark,
My drink in hand, I’m jauntily unbowed.
The sky’s tiered, windy galleries stream with cloud,
And higher still, the dazed stars thickly mass
In their long Ptolemaic arc.


What constellated powers, unkind or kind,
Sway me, what far preposterous ghosts of air?
Whoever they are, whatever our connection,
I toast them (toasting also my reflection),
Not minding that the words which come to mind
Make the toast less toast than prayer:


Here’s to the next year, to the best year yet;
To mixed joys, to my harum-scarum prime;
To auguries reliable and specious;
To times to come, such times being precious,
If only for the reason that they get
Shorter all the time.

P-p-p-p-published?

In January, I decided that this was finally going to be the year that I went ahead and jumped into the terrifying deep end (more like middle of the ocean without a boat) of publishing. As in, publishing my own poems. In real literary journals. That have bar codes.

I've made this resolution before. I've developed a strategy for submissions, researched literary magazines, and sorted through my poems. However, the last time I seriously submitted something was my first year of writing--back when I was new enough to think that it was okay to send the first draft of a (now, I realize) very bad short story to Glimmer Train. Heh. I was a confident bastard. The point is that I never actually had anything accepted, so I just kind of stopped trying. But I kept writing.

This year, I decided to try again. It was a bad year for fiction in 2009 (for one Ms. McClendon), so I decided to go back to writing and thinking about poetry.

Now, it's March (almost April) and I have submitted a total of approximately 12 poems to four different places. And...

one of them has been accepted!

I know what you're thinking. Either, "Good for you! That's hope, right there, is what that is!" or "Whatever, I do that all the time." But, here is (so far) my reaction:

Upon reading the acceptance email:
"Woah. It's like, official. I hope they didn't accidentally send this to me. Did they mean to send this to me? Yeah. They sent it to me. Woah. Yeah. Yes. Woah."

Then I was all like:
"I did it! I'm telling everyone! I can't wait to see it in print!"
(I started going into newsstand shops daydreaming about seeing my name in a literary journal.)

Then I heard that this awesome local poet* just published a book and I thought about how awesome she is and how much better her writing is and it turned into:
"So what if I got one little poem published. I'll never be as awesome as that."

* (Her blog post for March 26th has a poem by Marge Piercy that is kind of telling me to shut up and get back to work--but in a very inspiring and loving way.)

Which then became:
"What am I doing with my life?!?!? How have I convinced myself that this is a good idea?! This is ONE step in a long series of steps that has taken me FIVE years. By that calculation, I will be friggin' dead by the time I can do this for a living" (At which point I chuckled to myself cause that whole dead/living thing was kinda neat and I am my biggest fan.)

Then, I told some people and it was back to:
"Yeah! I did it! It's AMAZING."

But. This morning, I got an email from the editors asking me to look through the proof to make any last minute changes to my poem. I read the other poets and now I'm at:
"My poem sucks. How embarrassing. They were probably so embarrassed for me that they put it in the journal to make me feel better and to give me a reason to go on. Aw, man."

I'm sure it will change again. After all, there is (I hear) a release party forthcoming. I'm sure that will have it's own set of complicated (and somewhat rollercoastery) feelings.

Sigh. I love it. I'm sick.

Unhappy Hipsters (reality check!)

Try this! It will help you laugh your way into the weekend, dear readers. They are all pretty hilarious!

"Needless to say, Karl’s first impression of life outside the womb was a bit disappointing."

(Photo: Lara Tunbjork; The New York Times)

unhappyhispters.com

Oh my deer.

I found this illustrator a number of years ago and I fell right in love. This one is my favorite, but she has a number of other ones that are just as lovely and captivating. While searching the magical interwebs, I found a blog post mentioning her. The artist is Chiara Bautista and she lives in Tuscon, Arizona. Apparently, she is working on a website, but when I followed the link it said (sadly) "en construccion". Sigh. Her artwork mixes the mythical, religious, and contemporary in a way that gets me all crumpled up inside. Once her website is up and functioning, I highly recommend checking it out and buying some pretty pretty things.

Quickly Aging Here by Denis Johnson

1

nothing to drink in
the refrigerator but juice from
the pickles come back
long dead, or thin
catsup. i feel i am old

now, though surely i
am young enough? i feel that i have had
winters, too many heaped cold

and dry as reptiles into my slack skin.
i am not the kind to win
and win.
no i am not that kind, i can hear

my wife yelling, “goddamnit, quit
running over,” talking to
the stove, yelling, “i
mean it, just stop,” and i am old and

2

i wonder about everything: birds
clamber south, your car
kaputs in a blazing, dusty
nowhere, things happen, and constantly you

wish for your slight home, for
your wife’s rusted
voice slamming around the kitchen. so few

of us wonder why
we crowded, as strange,
monstrous bodies, blindly into one
another till the bed

choked, and our range
of impossible maneuvers was gone,
but isn’t it because by dissolving like so
much dust into the sheets we are crowding

south, into the kitchen, into
nowhere?

Ah, the villanelle. My new favorite form, masterfully done by Bishop.

One Art
by Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Well, yes.

It is not so much that I miss you
by Dorothea Grossman

It is not so much that I miss you
as the remembering
which I suppose is a form of missing
except more positive,
like the time of the blackout
when fear was my first response
followed by love of the dark.

I have to tell you
by Dorothea Grossman

I have to tell you,
there are times when
the sun strikes me
like a gong,
and I remember everything,
even your ears.

What a character!

Post Secret makes me want to write stories about the people who send in postcards. Like this one:

I mean, as a fiction writer, how could I not begin to create a narrative out of this? Who isn't curious about what this person says to a woman who can't respond? Who out there isn't wondering why this person is talking to someone who can't talk back? What fiction writer doesn't feel like they are doing this everytime they sit down to write a story? (Or maybe I am just being morbid here.) I heart heart heart Post Secret.

One of the other things I love is this. It's going to stop accepting assignments on May 1st, so get to it!

Although the title is cheesy, I started reading this last night. On the bus this morning, I found myself thinking about my characters--especially those poor bastards who have been hanging around in my subconscious for years waiting for me to let them speak--and I started to see the holes in their stories. There is one in particular that I've been working on since I started writing fiction (in 2005!) and I think this book may have helped snap me out of it, so to speak, and really see the reason I haven't been able to make the story work. I've always thought that I had a problem with plot, but really I think it comes down to character (some authors would argue that this is always the case).

My schedule is about to open up again. No more of this starting work at eight in the morning and not stopping until I leave class at nine in the eve anymore. Now I will start work at 9. This might make me appear overly optimistic about my free time. However, I will only be working part-time, so I'm going to actually have time to do the things I love (eat! write stories! read!) without having to do it while rushing from one place to another. (Last week, I ate my lunch on the bus and it was possibly the most disgusting thing I've ever done.)

When my time opens up, my mind opens up and I start daydreaming. And you know what that means.

Characters!

Said the Poet to the Analyst - Anne Sexton

My business is words. Words are like labels,
or coins, or better, like swarming bees.
I confess I am only broken by the sources of things;
as if words were counted like dead bees in the attic,
unbuckled from their yellow eyes and their dry wings.
I must always forget how one words is able to pick
out another, to manner another, until I have got
something I might have said...
but did not.
Your business is watching my words. But I
admit nothing. I work with my best, for instance,
when I can write my praise for a nickel machine,
that one night in Nevada: telling how the magic jackpot
came clacking three bells out, over the lucky screen.
But if you should say this is something it is not,
then I grow weak, remembering how my hands felt funny
and ridiculous and crowded with all
the believing money.

Composite Poem (written with a stranger).

I went to a class at the Hugo House last night. It was about organic poetry and was geared toward teachers of creative writing. There was none of the usual basic craft discussion, which was awesome because I've heard it, and I sat in a room filled with mostly middle aged white women. We did a number of exercises to access our subconscious minds and silence our internal editors (which I've been trying to do for months) and this was one of the things that came out of it:

When tuplis burst like open
mouths, the bees buzz
in a crowded hall
of yellow and orange, and
heat flames from chill
blue ice.

She tells me I need to stop
calling her name,
but I don't anymore.
Folded into my pocket, I
keep it up son, keep
it close to my heart
because I told you so
and you know I
hate it when you--

I see you when you
stop by the trailer
court, and all the darlings and
the bird that lands
on tiny petals sprouting
blue and purple and
gold winters.

I know. It's not the most amazing thing ever, but I love how my mind imposes a narrative on this. The exercise was pretty simple (try it with a stranger! or a friend!). Write one line and one word. Fold the page so only the one word shows. Pass it to your partner, who will complete the line and add one word on the next line. Have them fold it and pass it back. Rinse and repeat as needed.

Have fun!

One of my very favorites.

With Mercy for the Greedy
by Anne Sexton

For my friend, Ruth, who urges me to make an appointment for the Sacrament of Confession

Concerning your letter in which you ask
me to call a priest and in which you ask
me to wear The Cross that you enclose;
your own cross,
your dog-bitten cross,
no larger than a thumb,
small and wooden, no thorns, this rose—

I pray to its shadow,
that gray place
where it lies on your letter ... deep, deep.
I detest my sins and I try to believe
in The Cross. I touch its tender hips, its dark jawed face,
its solid neck, its brown sleep.

True. There is
a beautiful Jesus.
He is frozen to his bones like a chunk of beef.
How desperately he wanted to pull his arms in!
How desperately I touch his vertical and horizontal axes!
But I can’t. Need is not quite belief.

All morning long
I have worn
your cross, hung with package string around my throat.
It tapped me lightly as a child’s heart might,
tapping secondhand, softly waiting to be born.
Ruth, I cherish the letter you wrote.

My friend, my friend, I was born
doing reference work in sin, and born
confessing it. This is what poems are:
with mercy
for the greedy,
they are the tongue’s wrangle,
the world's pottage, the rat's star.

Check only one box.

It's census time! That means that I have received a form in the mail asking me about my race and sex. It also means that I have been thrown into the confusion of race identity, once again. Let me tell you a story.

A long time ago, a woman named Josephine was born in Mexico City. She grew up and fell in love with Frank. They moved to Arizona. They had a son named Frank. When Frank grew up, he married Alice, who bore my mother, Beverly.

My mother married a man from Washington who had Irish-Scottish ancestry, named Mike. My mother herself was a mix of Mexican, French, German, and Scottish.

What on earth does that make me?

On the census, it asks people if they are "of Hispanic origin", but clearly states that they (who is this "they"?) don't consider Hispanic a race. They go on to ask about race identity. Hispanic is not an option.

Yesterday, I stood in my kitchen holding this little piece of paper. I thought about my grandparents speaking Spanish to my mother and how they never taught me. I thought about my grandmother's homemade tortillas. I have never seen the recipe. When strangers see my grandparents, they ask them about working on farms and immigration--even though they were born in the U.S.

I haven't filled out the form. I don't know how to answer the question. Once upon a time, my history was in Mexico. Once upon a time, one drop of blood was the measurement for race. But. No one ever asks me if I'm part Mexican. I have white skin and white privilege. I have never checked a scholarship box indicating I am Hispanic because I'm afraid it might be like stealing.

But secreted away between my first and last name is the name Josephine.

“Any fool can get into an ocean . . .”

“Any fool can get into an ocean . . .”
by Jack Spicer

Any fool can get into an ocean
But it takes a Goddess
To get out of one.
What’s true of oceans is true, of course,
Of labyrinths and poems. When you start swimming
Through riptide of rhythms and the metaphor’s seaweed
You need to be a good swimmer or a born Goddess
To get back out of them
Look at the sea otters bobbing wildly
Out in the middle of the poem
They look so eager and peaceful playing out there where the
water hardly moves
You might get out through all the waves and rocks
Into the middle of the poem to touch them
But when you’ve tried the blessed water long
Enough to want to start backward
That’s when the fun starts
Unless you’re a poet or an otter or something supernatural
You’ll drown, dear. You’ll drown
Any Greek can get you into a labyrinth
But it takes a hero to get out of one
What’s true of labyrinths is true of course
Of love and memory. When you start remembering.

Source: Poetry (July/August 2008).

Mother and Child by Louise Gluck

We’re all dreamers; we don’t know who we are.

Some machine made us; machine of the world, the constricting family.
Then back to the world, polished by soft whips.

We dream; we don’t remember.

Machine of the family: dark fur, forests of the mother’s body.
Machine of the mother: white city inside her.

And before that: earth and water.
Moss between rocks, pieces of leaves and grass.

And before, cells in a great darkness.
And before that, the veiled world.

This is why you were born: to silence me.
Cells of my mother and father, it is your turn
to be pivotal, to be the masterpiece.

I improvised; I never remembered.
Now it’s your turn to be driven;
you’re the one who demands to know:

Why do I suffer? Why am I ignorant?
Cells in a great darkness. Some machine made us;
it is your turn to address it, to go back asking
what am I for? What am I for?

Kind of Blue by Lynn Powell

Not Delft or
delphinium, not Wedgewood
among the knickknacks, not wide-eyed chicory
evangelizing in the devil strip—

But way on down in the moonless
octave below midnight, honey,
way down where you can't tell cerulean
from teal.

Not Mason jars of moonshine, not
waverings of silk, not the long-legged hunger
of a heron or the peacock's
iridescent id—

But Delilahs of darkness, darling,
and the muscle of the mind
giving in.

Not sullen snow slumped
against the garden, not the first instinct of flame,
not small, stoic ponds, or the cold derangement
of a jealous sea—

But bluer than the lips of Lazarus, baby,
before Sweet Jesus himself could figure out
what else in the world to do but weep.

Waiting, waiting, waiting.

my dreams, my works, must wait till after hell
by Gwendolyn Brooks

I hold my honey and I store my bread
In little jars and cabinets of my will.
I label clearly, and each latch and lid
I bid, Be firm till I return from hell.
I am very hungry. I am incomplete.
And none can tell when I may dine again.
No man can give me any word but Wait,
The puny light. I keep eyes pointed in;
Hoping that, when the devil days of my hurt
Drag out to their last dregs and I resume
On such legs as are left me, in such heart
As I can manage, remember to go home,
My taste will not have turned insensitive
To honey and bread old purity could love.

Accidents.

It all looks so innocent. A swingset in a park. An innertube at the top of a snowy bank. But I keep managing to hurt myself by trying to do things kids do and adults should maybe not.

Last summer, I went out of town with a couple of friends to a place inspired by Belgian towns. That meant beer. Lots of beer. I decided to try the swingset in the local park. No big, right? Alas, I took it too far. Little old me (with my tum full of beers) decided to try to jump from the swinging swing--only I forgot what I was doing once I'd unhooked my arms and instead went flying out of the swing onto my knees in a gravel pit. Ouch. I was bruised up and in pain for days.

Last weekend, my sweetie and I went to the mountains (snow!) for a dreamy vacay and we spent one morning-ish afternoon in the snow. I found an innertube and decided it would be fun to try sledding. Listen. There were other people doing it too. My mistake was going off in my own direction to find my own sledding hill. I'm a loner. A rebel. So, I find this unused hill that is kind of a dream. The snow is slicked down and it looked like someone prepared it just for me. To sled.

As soon as I pushed off the top, I noticed the curled lip of snow that was going to shoot me into the air as soon as I reached the bottom. Oops. I slid around backwards, all the while saying, "Oh no no no no no no" and as soon as I was completely turned around, I flew off the lip (parallel to the ground) and landed on my fleshy/bone hip. Now there is a giant purple bruise, which I am kind of proud of, on my side and a somewhat rational fear of snow sledding.

"But it's funner to say letters."

Today, on the day of floaty hearty things and merry lovey-ness, I am going to relax and watch this. And laugh. A lot.

Blogs!

I found a new blog through my lazy interwebs floating and I think I'm in love. Also, I've realized how utterly boring my own blog must be to readers everywhere. Sorry, dudes. Here are some pictures of cute things to make up for the lack of verbal interesting.