Entry 1: This is a riff off a poem from Miracle Fruit by Aimee Nezhukumatathil which is the book Davidson let me borrow... from the poem "Origin of the Milky Way"
"I can't stop staring at the right-hand corner/ of the painting,and I am reminded of the man/ I miss, five hundred miles away."
The man I miss, 10 states or 2439.19 miles away, according to
Google Maps which only ever fails us when we're 10 inches apart,
if that, or if at all, when he gets mad we both get quiet, me
drivers seat with clenched fists, all the bad things pent up
in finger tips like they have been since i was six, you can't yell
at me, i tell him in a voice same volume as dean ween
humming through sound waves, but i can't stop staring at him out of the corner
of my eye like a painting, too loud to speak until he remembers
it's not my fault, touches my hand or head or whatever i let him
touch and sings along with words in context insulting but from his mouth
a hymn of forgiveness, the words don't matter, only his voice
like steam coming from bathroom doors, fogs up my car windows
so i can't stay sorry and when we finally get there,
wherever that place was, he never says sorry, only sings
his broken dylan to me in the voice that keeps me calling
over timezones. it's hard to drive like that, he notes, and i, back in the corner
of my kitchen when i'm small, stained and rented, nod my head to the song
hot on his breath open palms around steering wheel, regrip and release,
when i remember it's not his fault. i can't blame him
for clenched fists. he's never even seen my kitchen.
Entry 2: from "Cheese Curds: The First Time" by Aimee Nezhukumatathil ... I'm putting these as free-writes??? I hope that's okay.
"How I love/ the grab and pull for something you can't name, only/ knowing you want more. The thinness in your voice/ as you try to describe all the breads and heaps/ of fresh beans just waiting to be snapped./ I have not yet mentioned the squeak in your teeth."
All Wisconsin really gave me was hangovers
from cheese curds and company, guilt on my pant
leg the whole drive home, that's thirteen hours
when Beth drives eating Reese's puffs and my tiny
dancer of ten years makes bad raps from Shotgun
from the worst trip of our lives, orphaned by people
who aren't our parents, given up like babies
on church steps, unwanted property we left after bagels
and an offer we couldn't refuse but decided not to take,
a hotel room for a night just to get us out of here.
Our friend drives a truck, for a cheese factory
but for "a place for friends," we have only met
locked doors and bad luck.
The whole state is my favorite joke
and my worst nightmare, false sense
of belonging, temporary as cheap nail polish:
we needed a change in color, you see.
Swatting gnats by a frozen lake, he told me
he was sorry and i told him i didn't care,
i'd rather flip through his Playboys
than listen to his accent like carpet cleaning
sput fat complaints,
like that ingredient you regret in what
would have been perfect general tso's chicken,
the one that made us vomit after too much
whatever was in that thermos the night before.
People never know exactly what they want,
except every time we come back we know
we want cheese curds, desperate for the squeak
in your teeth you just can't get down south.
*note to sheshy if you read this, obviously inspired by read events and people but also it is just a freewrite aka reality on crack so keep that in mind... heh <33
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Improv Entries Week 10
Entry 1: from Kathy Fagan's "Womb to Tomb Pantoum"
"She was born, like so many of us,/ With a monkey on her back./ Her family said, As long as she's healthy.../ And took them home in the car."
Have you heard about the World's Smallest Woman? Her title,
in all-caps, lucky to survive the womb and then she has
a baby! Jaw-dropped me and roomie watch the three-footer or less
while shoving oatmeal and Zaxby's into our mouths, respectively,
as she climbs into the front seat of a town & country, crawls
around the seat for a minute until she fits just right and the only thing
i can think clear is how tall that husband is. six plus, maybe seven
feet tall. You see, I got no qualms with the woman. I think I love
her, even. I can see how it would happen. But this guy is three times
her size, too tall to drive the car, too stupid to write full sentences,
has some mommy issues which I think are bigger than he says, does
not see how his hand writing, his long fingers, look like
what i scribbled in composition books in first grade, when all my Is
were dotted with, not hearts, too much, big and elaborate circles
over every statement of self, desperate for ms. wilbanks to see my eyes
in the pile of six year old attention deficits, some kind of other
mother i guess i thought was how it worked when you got to school,
thought she would adopt me if my marks were bigger than everyone
else's even though I was always too small. Well, i used to be.
And then this woman on my Discovery Health, attitude heavy and pantene
hair, was the world's smallest mom. She gives life to another like her,
although it wasn't genetic and i wonder how she felt when the baby
was her size.
Entry 1: again, from Kathy Fagan's "'69"
"Sex has turned us rich/ or dead or funny, but it turns nobody/ bad, as Sister Carol said I'd be/ if I kept mum. Love does that, Mr. C./ Inside. Love made a potty-mouth of me."
Love made a potty-mouth of me, didn't even say a curse
word till my seventeenth birthday, which by the way, you
forgot, too stoned to remember my birthday you walked
into my house with friends of both genders and no gift,
not even a hug or nice word just a why are so many people here? but that doesn't matter anymore.
What does matter is when all the people scattered
like cockroaches after picking up a cardboard box
they call home, i told you it's my fucking birthday
cried like a baby, not because you forgot but because
i said the bad word that would turn me into my mother,
i'm sure. Love taught me that. Love taught me how to cry.
Love taught me how to lie, how to cheat, how to speak
badly of the ones I said I loved, like love was a thing
not just a word. Love didn't love me back and love is just
four words people put together when they need to know
whatever kind of bad feeling's they've got are real.
Love is an invisible man. But sex is the girl next door.
Sex taught me how to walk in heels, get dinner for free,
how to put on lipstick and how to wash my face before bed.
Sex taught me everything school teachers forgot, the best
word I know, the only word in the world that make sense
other than toothpaste or gum, words that matter and mean
exactly what they say, something love never quite figured out.
"She was born, like so many of us,/ With a monkey on her back./ Her family said, As long as she's healthy.../ And took them home in the car."
Have you heard about the World's Smallest Woman? Her title,
in all-caps, lucky to survive the womb and then she has
a baby! Jaw-dropped me and roomie watch the three-footer or less
while shoving oatmeal and Zaxby's into our mouths, respectively,
as she climbs into the front seat of a town & country, crawls
around the seat for a minute until she fits just right and the only thing
i can think clear is how tall that husband is. six plus, maybe seven
feet tall. You see, I got no qualms with the woman. I think I love
her, even. I can see how it would happen. But this guy is three times
her size, too tall to drive the car, too stupid to write full sentences,
has some mommy issues which I think are bigger than he says, does
not see how his hand writing, his long fingers, look like
what i scribbled in composition books in first grade, when all my Is
were dotted with, not hearts, too much, big and elaborate circles
over every statement of self, desperate for ms. wilbanks to see my eyes
in the pile of six year old attention deficits, some kind of other
mother i guess i thought was how it worked when you got to school,
thought she would adopt me if my marks were bigger than everyone
else's even though I was always too small. Well, i used to be.
And then this woman on my Discovery Health, attitude heavy and pantene
hair, was the world's smallest mom. She gives life to another like her,
although it wasn't genetic and i wonder how she felt when the baby
was her size.
Entry 1: again, from Kathy Fagan's "'69"
"Sex has turned us rich/ or dead or funny, but it turns nobody/ bad, as Sister Carol said I'd be/ if I kept mum. Love does that, Mr. C./ Inside. Love made a potty-mouth of me."
Love made a potty-mouth of me, didn't even say a curse
word till my seventeenth birthday, which by the way, you
forgot, too stoned to remember my birthday you walked
into my house with friends of both genders and no gift,
not even a hug or nice word just a why are so many people here? but that doesn't matter anymore.
What does matter is when all the people scattered
like cockroaches after picking up a cardboard box
they call home, i told you it's my fucking birthday
cried like a baby, not because you forgot but because
i said the bad word that would turn me into my mother,
i'm sure. Love taught me that. Love taught me how to cry.
Love taught me how to lie, how to cheat, how to speak
badly of the ones I said I loved, like love was a thing
not just a word. Love didn't love me back and love is just
four words people put together when they need to know
whatever kind of bad feeling's they've got are real.
Love is an invisible man. But sex is the girl next door.
Sex taught me how to walk in heels, get dinner for free,
how to put on lipstick and how to wash my face before bed.
Sex taught me everything school teachers forgot, the best
word I know, the only word in the world that make sense
other than toothpaste or gum, words that matter and mean
exactly what they say, something love never quite figured out.
Junkyard Week 10
Leave It to Beaver Syndrome
shell-shock
"Sometime during my life, toilet paper became bathroom tissue." -George Carlin
"To forget would be to let them be born again in another form." -Sig-Weavie's character in The Village, which I had to watch fo' classe
Fear doesn't deserve us.
"Or dreams about my talking cat telling me where she is. Behind my mom's toilet or writing letters to me from Mexico." -KAITLIN MARIE BARNES.
shell-shock
"Sometime during my life, toilet paper became bathroom tissue." -George Carlin
"To forget would be to let them be born again in another form." -Sig-Weavie's character in The Village, which I had to watch fo' classe
Fear doesn't deserve us.
"Or dreams about my talking cat telling me where she is. Behind my mom's toilet or writing letters to me from Mexico." -KAITLIN MARIE BARNES.
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Free Write Entires Week 9
Entry 1:
I was driving into the sunset and decided to keep going, broke
through some wall of light or another to ride waves, solar flares
we like to call Mama, Ma not familiar with these sorts of things,
don't have time to bother with this scientific shit she'd tell us
by the cookie co's oven, baking obesity into the mouths of babes,
reality is when the sun burns out like the oven light
mama will still be there, shoving sugar in our mouths
and mantras in our brains - and if they ever try to hurt ya,
she says, why you just get em with a lock in a sock. it's considered
a deadly weapon but we don't give a damn. we like she's already
there, beside us, slanging tube socks into faces of people
too rude to just ask nicely. seek and ye shall find, He said
and she told us. Mama told us that she met Jesus there right in a jail cell,
locked up for twenty for selling the drug that carved the wrinkles
in her hands, her hands older than she could ever look, she's no
good for much of anything but this: advice we'll pretend we forget
but write down to keep as jokes but when she told me not to burn down
bridges cus you'll be leaving the trolls homeless, i remembered.
All of us glued together by her smoke breaks
and deep breaths, our family built from her back wood
accent and carved by her reminders that there ain't nobody
that will love you more than the people who already do.
Mama got fired and we all came back anyway, some karmic
betrayl of the only person who ever knew
what she was talking about, the one who saved us,
the Jesus we met behind cookie caked counters
and in duck decored kitchens during our own
last supper: green beans and fried chicken, baby. you can count on that.
Entry 2:
Fun was the first word I could spell. Three letters
neat consonant, vowel, consonant like the kind we were having
big plans to go nowhere but exactly where we were, in wonderland,
birthday parties and lego sets (even though we were just three
girls), dreams or maybe not because all of it was the same
thing, being awake or being inside was all colors tied
around my wrist like limp balloons. And I was ten out
of nowhere, begged my mom to let me skip that birthday
and just be eleven now, forget those days - who needs
an extra year, mommy? Mommy got shorter and Fun gets louder
when you get turned up in years or days or seconds even
minute by minute until you are done listening to music
and just want to be alone. F-U-N, three letters for one
word, also necessary in funk where the fun leads
when you just forget to have it.
side note: the first word i could actually spell was green, just fyi.
I was driving into the sunset and decided to keep going, broke
through some wall of light or another to ride waves, solar flares
we like to call Mama, Ma not familiar with these sorts of things,
don't have time to bother with this scientific shit she'd tell us
by the cookie co's oven, baking obesity into the mouths of babes,
reality is when the sun burns out like the oven light
mama will still be there, shoving sugar in our mouths
and mantras in our brains - and if they ever try to hurt ya,
she says, why you just get em with a lock in a sock. it's considered
a deadly weapon but we don't give a damn. we like she's already
there, beside us, slanging tube socks into faces of people
too rude to just ask nicely. seek and ye shall find, He said
and she told us. Mama told us that she met Jesus there right in a jail cell,
locked up for twenty for selling the drug that carved the wrinkles
in her hands, her hands older than she could ever look, she's no
good for much of anything but this: advice we'll pretend we forget
but write down to keep as jokes but when she told me not to burn down
bridges cus you'll be leaving the trolls homeless, i remembered.
All of us glued together by her smoke breaks
and deep breaths, our family built from her back wood
accent and carved by her reminders that there ain't nobody
that will love you more than the people who already do.
Mama got fired and we all came back anyway, some karmic
betrayl of the only person who ever knew
what she was talking about, the one who saved us,
the Jesus we met behind cookie caked counters
and in duck decored kitchens during our own
last supper: green beans and fried chicken, baby. you can count on that.
Entry 2:
Fun was the first word I could spell. Three letters
neat consonant, vowel, consonant like the kind we were having
big plans to go nowhere but exactly where we were, in wonderland,
birthday parties and lego sets (even though we were just three
girls), dreams or maybe not because all of it was the same
thing, being awake or being inside was all colors tied
around my wrist like limp balloons. And I was ten out
of nowhere, begged my mom to let me skip that birthday
and just be eleven now, forget those days - who needs
an extra year, mommy? Mommy got shorter and Fun gets louder
when you get turned up in years or days or seconds even
minute by minute until you are done listening to music
and just want to be alone. F-U-N, three letters for one
word, also necessary in funk where the fun leads
when you just forget to have it.
side note: the first word i could actually spell was green, just fyi.
Improv Entries Week 9
Entry 1: "To remember/ is to murmur, mourn, be/ mindful of things worthy/ of remembrance: it could/ put the fear of God/ into you, but what could God/ be afraid of..." from First Life of St. Francis III by Angie Estes
What is God afraid of? Clowns, like everyone else.
Snuggles the Bear on television commercials, talking
into drive-thru windows or going to front doors, committment
to girls who are prettier than him, failing an exam or a class or
Himself. Dreams where you fall for miles and miles until you hit
rock bottom or bottoming out of a bottomless pit or falling on your bottom
in front of everyone when I was in preschool dressed in gingham
holding a fake dog and wondering why they were all laughing,
glowing hands singing songs about Jesus, His reflection-
now a vampire, obligatory conversation on car rides home,
getting His period the day of His first beach date, the dentist,
the mall, the people, nothing but fear itself.
We know what scares God most because we all look
just like him. The chorus sings: I do not Exist, I do not Exist, I do not Exist.
Entry 2: You Can Tell "if fish are fresh by the way/ their bodies arch," by Angie Estes
if fish are fresh, which these aren't
by the way the smell you can tell, no fresh
fish or food period - we're all going
hungry tonight and every night, our bodies
aching for others and fresh flesh to hold
onto before floating off to dreamland
or elsewhere, no where but here baby, nowhere
at all - their bodies and mine lined up
like sushi or shoes she lines in her closet
in order, ROY G BIV, knows silver is always
at the end of the row because it's the lining
of her life like that on her jacket she borrowed
or stole from her sister she used to hate.
The arch of her foot was always higher than mine
my body no match for hers, delicate as sugar castles
they have to move from table to another on food network,
that part I'll never understand, who makes this shit
up anyway? my dad bellows from the kitchen, furrowed
scooping banana flavored ice cream into a ninja turtle
bowl i swear my uncle gave me because he used to borrow
us like we were shoes, fresh little fish he could
catch and release when he was done teasing.
What is God afraid of? Clowns, like everyone else.
Snuggles the Bear on television commercials, talking
into drive-thru windows or going to front doors, committment
to girls who are prettier than him, failing an exam or a class or
Himself. Dreams where you fall for miles and miles until you hit
rock bottom or bottoming out of a bottomless pit or falling on your bottom
in front of everyone when I was in preschool dressed in gingham
holding a fake dog and wondering why they were all laughing,
glowing hands singing songs about Jesus, His reflection-
now a vampire, obligatory conversation on car rides home,
getting His period the day of His first beach date, the dentist,
the mall, the people, nothing but fear itself.
We know what scares God most because we all look
just like him. The chorus sings: I do not Exist, I do not Exist, I do not Exist.
Entry 2: You Can Tell "if fish are fresh by the way/ their bodies arch," by Angie Estes
if fish are fresh, which these aren't
by the way the smell you can tell, no fresh
fish or food period - we're all going
hungry tonight and every night, our bodies
aching for others and fresh flesh to hold
onto before floating off to dreamland
or elsewhere, no where but here baby, nowhere
at all - their bodies and mine lined up
like sushi or shoes she lines in her closet
in order, ROY G BIV, knows silver is always
at the end of the row because it's the lining
of her life like that on her jacket she borrowed
or stole from her sister she used to hate.
The arch of her foot was always higher than mine
my body no match for hers, delicate as sugar castles
they have to move from table to another on food network,
that part I'll never understand, who makes this shit
up anyway? my dad bellows from the kitchen, furrowed
scooping banana flavored ice cream into a ninja turtle
bowl i swear my uncle gave me because he used to borrow
us like we were shoes, fresh little fish he could
catch and release when he was done teasing.
Junkyard Entries Week 9
"It was the frogs that taught me." -Christopher Anastoos (professor at UWG).. from this essay he wrote (obviously...) that Cara had to read for his class.
"I have been nothing but myself since the day I was born." Big Fish
"Even intimacy comes from the magazines." -R. Hendricks
Sexting is a crime in space
"For the glitter was gone from the eyes of the judge and jury, and, for the moment, they were men again, and knew they were men." -from "The Devil and Daniel Webster" by Stephen Vincent Benét
"I have been nothing but myself since the day I was born." Big Fish
"Even intimacy comes from the magazines." -R. Hendricks
Sexting is a crime in space
"For the glitter was gone from the eyes of the judge and jury, and, for the moment, they were men again, and knew they were men." -from "The Devil and Daniel Webster" by Stephen Vincent Benét
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Improv Entries Week 8
Entry 1: From Miscegnation by Natasha Trethewey
"I know more than Joe Christmas did. Natasha is a Russian name-/ though I'm not; it means Christmas child, even in Mississippi."
M-i-s-s-i-s-s-i-s-s-i-p-p-i, letter by letter shamed and slurred into a microphone
knowing he had one too many one-twos, and it's too bad he didn't have some paper
or a pen or one of those memories that can see stuff, not just know it, but I'm not
to blame. I look down at my shoes R on one L on the other, in case you forget
my dad huffed a stretch back upward, my embarrassment like a beached whale in our
living room this morning but i remember every word he tells me, told me what he wanted
before he dies, already been alive too long, old enough to remember everything
i never got to see, see, that kid, he doesn't have this dad with the songs, the jokes
that help you remember how to spell state names or place mats with president faces,
this guy with a blessing they call bipolar he taught us girls
everything about all the things we'll never need to know. as that kid sinks
into himself i want to let him know what i know: my dad said when i was six
that if you can't spell elvis presley,
you'll never need to know anything about mississippi.
Entry 2: from Natasha Trethewey's Photograph: Ice Storm, 1971
"Why the rough edge of beauty? Why/ the tired face of a woman, suffering/ made luminous by the camera's eye?"
The edge of beauty is located at the corner of 16
and a panic attack, most beautiful after shed tears
over a boy, green lit ocean surrounding a black
island on her face as the older woman brushes back
loose strands, says other fish in the sea, but she knows
you don't fall in love with fish. you fall in love
with photographs, phone calls, that birth mark
on the back of his neck, the smell of coffee
because he's older, the suffering that comes
with giving it up or the fight that continues
when you won't, mom's warnings within you
illuminated when you say no to drugs and sex
and never the camera and his face when you don't,
tired eyes sunk back into a cherub face, raspberries
line the nape of your neck because he taught you
that you had that body part in the first place.
at the edge of beauty, all the lights are red
because the only thing there when you turn 17
is rabbit hole in the middle of the street
filled with knowledge of good and nothing ever is.
"I know more than Joe Christmas did. Natasha is a Russian name-/ though I'm not; it means Christmas child, even in Mississippi."
M-i-s-s-i-s-s-i-s-s-i-p-p-i, letter by letter shamed and slurred into a microphone
knowing he had one too many one-twos, and it's too bad he didn't have some paper
or a pen or one of those memories that can see stuff, not just know it, but I'm not
to blame. I look down at my shoes R on one L on the other, in case you forget
my dad huffed a stretch back upward, my embarrassment like a beached whale in our
living room this morning but i remember every word he tells me, told me what he wanted
before he dies, already been alive too long, old enough to remember everything
i never got to see, see, that kid, he doesn't have this dad with the songs, the jokes
that help you remember how to spell state names or place mats with president faces,
this guy with a blessing they call bipolar he taught us girls
everything about all the things we'll never need to know. as that kid sinks
into himself i want to let him know what i know: my dad said when i was six
that if you can't spell elvis presley,
you'll never need to know anything about mississippi.
Entry 2: from Natasha Trethewey's Photograph: Ice Storm, 1971
"Why the rough edge of beauty? Why/ the tired face of a woman, suffering/ made luminous by the camera's eye?"
The edge of beauty is located at the corner of 16
and a panic attack, most beautiful after shed tears
over a boy, green lit ocean surrounding a black
island on her face as the older woman brushes back
loose strands, says other fish in the sea, but she knows
you don't fall in love with fish. you fall in love
with photographs, phone calls, that birth mark
on the back of his neck, the smell of coffee
because he's older, the suffering that comes
with giving it up or the fight that continues
when you won't, mom's warnings within you
illuminated when you say no to drugs and sex
and never the camera and his face when you don't,
tired eyes sunk back into a cherub face, raspberries
line the nape of your neck because he taught you
that you had that body part in the first place.
at the edge of beauty, all the lights are red
because the only thing there when you turn 17
is rabbit hole in the middle of the street
filled with knowledge of good and nothing ever is.
Freewrite Entries Week 8
Entry 1:
I'm starting to have a brain fart- a bad start? i wonder if my mind is empty, have we said all there is to say? same worry of every worry wart who writes a word or six million a year, letters only twenty six to choose from, i write all my letters from them, i don't care how many words you say we've got because we've only got twenty six shapes that matter, twenty six responsible for everything we do, say, see, a bird or war, dad or mother, does it matter what we write if we can only write so much, nothing matters without math, 1+1 is Two, three letters later, what kind of math are we talking? i remember when i loved that boy (same as two) and our teacher with the cankles let her fat (same as two) dangle over sock ends and we all laughed all day because she was gross. but gross is five letters, one more than love, love one more than boy but same as girl, so who matters more? more is better if conditions are right, we like more goodness but i like more salt on everything. they tell me not to count the lines, that will just fuck you up but the thing is the only way i understand what i do is through the one thing i can't more than anything. when i add letter to letter to form a word like miss i make millions of one plus one, language from letter, and you are all missing my point. on skin, my fake paper, i write the two letters that make up all of you and in purple ink, i forge my own alphabet.
Entry 2: Actually... Rich wrote something in his junkyard this week regarding a urinal and unborn children... "Wouldn't it technically be the life of your unborn child that is in your hands? Thinking of it this way, what does your life being in your hands mean? Think about it." So this is kind of riffed off that idea. Can you riff an idea? Does that make sense?
Life is in your hands, she says,
first grade teachers' seminar and i think
how this same lady slept in my hotel room
two nights in a row now, this woman like Ceberus,
delicate when sleeping, dangerous when awake
calling upon life from the bellows of her groin,
tempted and taken to me like no woman
ever has before. I'm not charming but she came
back with me, followed me like a baby
after music, to lay me in thirty dollar
per night sea horse sheets stained
with dead babies or would have beens
if you're an optimist, steal the covers,
drink my three dollar gas station wine,
and put her life in my hands instead
of how it usually goes, me alone with Alex
Trebec and his temporary desciples, 7:30
every night for years now, eating a cardboard
diet and watching something like life
fail over and over again in my small hands.
The words hang from her mouth like drool
as she catches my glare, unimpressed
and bored at the thought of whatever
we've done or what i haven't done
right because i am ascribed inferior
not by the Bible but a bigger Truth:
women cry because they have already won.
Ceberus had three heads, and I only have two.
I'm starting to have a brain fart- a bad start? i wonder if my mind is empty, have we said all there is to say? same worry of every worry wart who writes a word or six million a year, letters only twenty six to choose from, i write all my letters from them, i don't care how many words you say we've got because we've only got twenty six shapes that matter, twenty six responsible for everything we do, say, see, a bird or war, dad or mother, does it matter what we write if we can only write so much, nothing matters without math, 1+1 is Two, three letters later, what kind of math are we talking? i remember when i loved that boy (same as two) and our teacher with the cankles let her fat (same as two) dangle over sock ends and we all laughed all day because she was gross. but gross is five letters, one more than love, love one more than boy but same as girl, so who matters more? more is better if conditions are right, we like more goodness but i like more salt on everything. they tell me not to count the lines, that will just fuck you up but the thing is the only way i understand what i do is through the one thing i can't more than anything. when i add letter to letter to form a word like miss i make millions of one plus one, language from letter, and you are all missing my point. on skin, my fake paper, i write the two letters that make up all of you and in purple ink, i forge my own alphabet.
Entry 2: Actually... Rich wrote something in his junkyard this week regarding a urinal and unborn children... "Wouldn't it technically be the life of your unborn child that is in your hands? Thinking of it this way, what does your life being in your hands mean? Think about it." So this is kind of riffed off that idea. Can you riff an idea? Does that make sense?
Life is in your hands, she says,
first grade teachers' seminar and i think
how this same lady slept in my hotel room
two nights in a row now, this woman like Ceberus,
delicate when sleeping, dangerous when awake
calling upon life from the bellows of her groin,
tempted and taken to me like no woman
ever has before. I'm not charming but she came
back with me, followed me like a baby
after music, to lay me in thirty dollar
per night sea horse sheets stained
with dead babies or would have beens
if you're an optimist, steal the covers,
drink my three dollar gas station wine,
and put her life in my hands instead
of how it usually goes, me alone with Alex
Trebec and his temporary desciples, 7:30
every night for years now, eating a cardboard
diet and watching something like life
fail over and over again in my small hands.
The words hang from her mouth like drool
as she catches my glare, unimpressed
and bored at the thought of whatever
we've done or what i haven't done
right because i am ascribed inferior
not by the Bible but a bigger Truth:
women cry because they have already won.
Ceberus had three heads, and I only have two.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Strategy Response Week 8
As in many places within the collection "Native Guard," Natasha Trethewey's Miscegenation manipulates the larger poetic tradition of recycling language by recycling one word especially: Mississippi. This word calls attention to itself as it appears in each stanza and carries throughout the collection. The word "Mississippi" itself recycles letters and the double-consonant sounds, allowing the word to behave as a symbol for what the work as a whole is performing. The word "Mississippi" stands as a geographical symbol, which further implies cultural and historical meaning, adding to Trethewey's focus on the Civil War in the text overall.
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