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.