Improvs, Weeks 11, 13, 14 & 15

Week 11: Entry 1:Entry 1: from Jillian Weise's “The Body in Pain”
“Dear Lucy, You do not know me. It feels wrong/ for me to know about the heroin, the bags/ of mail you kept, the bolt in your face./ For what it is worth, I have a bolt in my hip,/ a hook along my spine. I don’t want to talk/ about any of this. Tell me: what was your last/ good thing.? Can we stay there?”
Dear June 6,
You do not remember me, I bet, but I know about your Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles towel you’ve had since the first time your mom bought you ice cream sandwiches, maybe you were six but since then you figured out they always taste better from the truck. For what it’s worth, I remember everything you never knew how to say out loud, how you tasted after our first dinner and a frozen slushy we started to share in the backseat of that blue beast I’ve had to tell all my secrets to since I lost your number. I remember every hook along your spine, all the bumps of bone I could feel through skin no matter how much you eat. I know we have forgotten how to talk about any of this but tell me, can we stay there? Not boyfriend or lover, not a friend with benefits even, even though there were the benefits and we were friends, you were my first step, the only one between me and my new good thing. Before there were words, there were our fingerprints on fogged windows, paint stains on trampolines, and always that smell of old donut glaze in your hair, the smell from the hallway that morning before that german test I didn’t fail, the smell that brought me back to you in the woods holding hands talking about a marriage neither of us wanted, how we were too small to feel this big, how the trees were green like the flecks in your blue eyes, the ones nobody gets close enough to see, how they would have been green somehow, we’d say, we’d say nothing and know everything nobody else could talk about. Do you remember the good thing? Tell me, can we just stay there?

Entry 2: from Jillian Weise’s “The Gift”
“We fly home/ with new parts. We tell everyone it was/ an accident in the Ford Escape and should/ be normal in a few days. Now we can be happy./ I always wanted to strip at the Kitty Cave/ on South Elm. Holman always wanted/ to drop pants in front of several women,/ lights on. We have affairs. We are in love.”

We tell everyone it was an accident, one that needed to be
put into a pocket like rocks, like any other raised-in-Tennessee
boy, just hidden away unseen and untouched we just needed
to think about it for a while, think about erasing names from notebooks
that would have ever made it seem like something we wanted,
like we wanted anything , but I swear we didn’t. I only wanted
you, your face against my face or thighs or anywhere that wasn’t
elsewhere, as long as you were somewhere near me – I didn’t
cry when we found out because I don’t care. I just didn’t want you
to fly home without leaving something behind for me to remember
your smoke where I would’ve forgotten any other affair. We left
the lights on, can you believe it? I guess you would have to, since you
were there, were not interested in taking time off or closing windows.
There is no time when you are in love to do anything but complain
about how you wish certain parts were different, not bigger or
better, but maybe less functioning, less determined to follow
their anatomical properties, because when you are in love,
you will not have time to think about how your body will do
whatever it wants, no matter how many sixth grade health
pamphlets taught you that you will get pregnant, and die.

Week 13: Entry 1:from Melanie Jordan’s "Parenthetical"
“I’m watching/ a woman’s shadow overwhelm the red/ interior of her second story while/ the white curtain like a minidress/ obscures her waist, ruffles her thigh./ She changes…”

Overwhelmed by the red that frames the window
when the sun is setting on the third floor, all I see
is a woman’s shadow. This is the first time I’ve noticed
but I wonder if she’s noticed, seen me not-staring,
not-noticing, not clothed or conscious sometimes,
towel damp and in underpants, ironing pants or white
hair that happened on accident (Bonnie told me I should
try.), and I wonder what would happen if I invited her,
this shadow, for tea, not that I drink tea, but I would
for her, for you, I’d tell her, tell her I have seen her
on my wall, ten feet tall or more, less overwhelmed
by the real thing but more in love than I am with
the shadow. I wonder if she would dance slow like
with me by the light of the setting lampshade,
wonder if she would kiss me slow or kiss me at all,
if I am even her type, if she is even that type,
to kiss without asking where these lips have been
which is nowhere lately, I’d tell her that. Tell her
anything she did or did not want to hear, not here
to lie but here to fall in trouble with the girl with the most
beautiful shadow I’ve ever danced with. The music
would slow and I would ask her back to the room,
which she looks into every night, I’m sure of that now.

Entry 2: from Jordan’s “Charlie Brown in the Dead of Night”
“I’ve danced with girls before, swaying lightly back/ and forth, just on the edge of what it means/ to fill my body, of being poured in like wet cement.”
I’ve danced with you before, girl, swayed
with you light like cloud head, like light black,
like the edge of meaning or the edge of a fresh
haircut, soft body to fill you with, soft lips to kiss
your mindcult, man can’t touch what you own
or need, nothing can do anything better than we
can’t do them. I am swaying with you again
in smoke rings and blush puffs, this night mean
knowing it will end us because there is no end
of us or end of anything but we are not allowed
to think or learn because we are only allowed
each other, allowed to say real words when drunk
is on our breaths, between our breaths, between
our breasts, between any and all things where beauty
is born, the words you came from, the words
you were born from, words like brunette and ovary,
words that you blow in my ear, scented pink like
how it feels to wake up next to you sober.

Week 14: entry 1:From Bridgette Byrd’s “After Gazing at the Rain”
“About the scar he said It’s right here and the story was written on his side like a flower. She watched their slippage like an inward astronomer on the evidence of pain. She woke up to feel their fingers locked…”
I woke to find your fingers broken by picking flowers on repeat she loves me loves me not she loves me loves me loves me but nothing belongs to the lost cigarette behind green plumes. I was or you might have been drinking cherry coke in faux French and your accent was music a sexy metaphor to ears that did not know better or did not know anything. music is not talkative though not gracious or hard. Do you have the power to light a diamond? to flash like a disposable camera? to be a cigarette without a filter like the last one? Where did the hunger go? Behind couches next to Jesus hiding because he never did want to be found only remembered like baseball players like Paris Hilton like everyone I never wanted to get to know any better. You need never turn to the lollipop guild, the lollipop guild, the lollipop guild. They never answer the phone. They only attend frat parties.

Entry 2: From those last one-line poems of Byrd’s – “On hanging onto a denounement she said If there is no end to this story I shall tie another flower to the narrative.”
There is no end to this story so I shall tie another razor blade to the window. I know you are attracted. A quarter of weed will buy you a tall cup of skim milk in this one-trick-pony town but you cannot buy it here and if you do it will not fit into the shopping cart because there are no wheels. Her shorts in the cereal aisle rode up her shorts rode up her shorts to show the sweat stain in her butt crack. The boy said I will dry clean your heart but I told him to stop to not say so much to the man behind the curtain. I told him not to brush so hard after flossing that way that his teeth would never be white anyway that he was stained with the love of exhaustion. I was comfortable rolling the shopping cart filled with your cement clogs into the piles of boxes overpriced what they call snacks but what she calls disgusting. Why is it so dark and the floor is made of clay? I melted with Artax. He was a white horse. And now I have killed him.


Week 15:
Since we didn't have a specific poet this week I am riffing off Kim Addonizio since she's my favorite. Evah.
Entry 1: from Kim Addonizio’s “Forms of Love” - "I love everything about you except your hair./ If it weren't for that I know I could really, really love you."
I broke up with my first boyfriend ever because
he got a haircut. All I remember is coming to school
and seeing this boy look wrong, look like he a problem,
like a mistake, like the haircut gave him away, no more
mystery or charm, no more wit or good handwriting-
which was, of course, my favorite thing. His hair
probably did not even look good long but I don’t think
that was the point. When he cut his hair, I passed him
a note, made him cry during lunch and that was the first
real heartbreak I caused, first boy I hated when I saw him
cry, first time I never wanted to see somebody ever again,
and for good reason: tears make people turn to trolls,
warped faces and he already hated all the music I liked,
his eyebrows in a frenzy of furrow, wrinkled forehead
and puppy dog eyes- I am not going to feed you, Fido,
not going to entertain you with flushing the toilet fifty
times a day just so you can watch, I will flush it once,
when necessary, and I will gladly watch you squirm.


from “Happiness After Grief” “feels like such a betrayal: the hurt not denied, not pushed away, but gone entirely for that moment you can’t help feeling good in, a moment of sudden, irrational joy over nothing of consequence, really, which makes it all somehow seem even worse. Shouldn’t happiness be the result of some grand event, something adequate to counter that aching, gaping chasm that opened when… But, no: it’s merely this: there goes our little neighbor, running barefoot, no pants, fox stole wrapped around her shoulders.”
Around my mother’s neck is her dead mother’s string of
leftovers, the things that weighed her down. My grandmother,
the thoughtful woman she was, left my mother these things,
bills and molding cheese in her fridge, and a cat, Tiger, who
was too old to learn to love anybody but my mean old grandma
who is dead now, because she died alone. Her funeral played
traditional Swedish music that I nearly choked not to laugh at,
but my dad cried even though I think he used to hate her
because she locked my sister up in a dark bathroom but of course
there are monsters and toilet paper is not nice but she was
not a nice lady, and I mean that. She liked me but she
forgot how to love my mom, never loved her maybe, at least
not as much as my dumb uncle or rich aunt, good people
with bad intentions, but when my grandma died only my mother
cared, only my mother listened to her dead wishes, only one
with a gaping chasm where she should’ve been given a heart
but I think the wizard forgot, forgot like my mom never will
like my grandma never forgave, like people can only do one
or the other, never both, the good feelings like pants that
are too tight or too loose or missing a button, like the ones
my grandma knew how to push on my poor mother, like to tell
my mom she was going to be okay one day, like my mom was
still not enough, like she was still in middle school, the first kid
with braces in her whole city almost, crooked teeth to ruin
an otherwise perfect smile.

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.

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.

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.

Improv Entries Week 7

Entry 1:
From Sandra Meek's The Mechanics of Failure

"Mostly/ there is no warning: planes slam/ into buildings, or you do your own/ crash and burn, lighting life down/ to a finger of ash."

Crash and burn, another failed earth science
test, an absurd subject, mr. lewis, the preacher
of practiced lies from the purple book and i don't believe anything
he or the damn purple book say and instead a latin mantra,
not the way tree bark grows or what is under my feet, sticks
like glitter to cracks in the floor boards, it's what cauks
the cracks in my gray matter: Omnia mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis.
And then, and by then I mean now, a second home to accidental heroes
used to unclean manhattan air, used to chaos but not disaster,
fall like jenga pieces to a ground now known as zero,
the number you can't count, the number after 6 in red
on the chapter 2 test i got back five minutes before
on dirt or some shit i can't remember. but i remember
feeling zero, not knowing what to do, rumors already spreading
tainted words, disfigured mutations like gohnorrea of truth,
wrong and unapologetic, curable on some level if you could
just track down the source and the girl across from me pulls
a Bible from her back pack, begins reading Revelations, out loud,
and I thought about the only verse I know, written in black children's font
on the linen i lay my head on at night, pictures in some places, a cup
for cup, grass for green pastures, a sun for days
before i knew what a psalm was.
When they ask me, when i'm old, where I was when the buildings fell,
what I did when I saw 110 tumble down into zero, I'll tell 'em.
I was in seventh grade science class, praying to a pillowcase.

Entry 2: From Sandra Meek's Couratijn River
"Such perfect balance, such/ perfect revolution: the eldest son lights/ the pyre, the old man burns on shore."

The eldest son lights a cigarillo with a match
by the bridge we all jump from summer after summer
into shallow water of an oh-fuck temperature, into clarity:
nothing matters. My hair was purple then and his chest
was covered in brown hair, finally, but before all the others,
my brother in crime and Jesus. His old man burned
when he got home, smelled smoke in his blonde hair,
gave him hell and a mark like a red lotus bloomed
under his skin by his eye. But nothing mattered
but us, us fived tied like old rope to heartwood,
a perfect balance of knowing nothing and taking
everything, tattered shorts and heartstrings
on fire, burning up the little bit of sand
left in the bottle. And just like it came, it went.
That was the summer i fell in love with everyone
and my harmonica, when we sang songs behind the Shyre
and on trampolines, left imprints of backside
in waffle house booths and he told me in whiskey scented words
i am not inside your head. i am your head. and we're going nowhere
slow as we got there.

Imitation Entries Week 6

Entry 1: From The Missing Child by John Poch ... which by the way, I think, is my favorite in the collection. Wish I'd written it.

"The mother dreams she is her own neighbor/ who has a living daughter. The father is driven/ livid by men in suits and women in jewels."

I'm a child missing in a department store
or zoo, how I remember it, too big for me
like the clothes living in mommy's closet except
the Japanese vest from when she was small
like me, my mom says "BJ's" but it doesn't really matter.
I just remember hiding behind suits
from my mother and father, too,
because they were alligators in people
suits, living and breathing but eating
our neighbors at night and I'm the only one
who knows. In my dreams, we are a normal
family, my mom, not an alien, but a woman
in jewels, my dad in a suit sans the Elvis
tie he wears to every funeral, my sisters
like me and I'm no longer a broken bird
but a daughter. My alligator parents find me
sleeping by a desk by customer service,
tell Sheree in the red polo "thank-you"
and while i'm driven home, i am cursed at
because alligator parents don't know
human moms don't use up all the bad words
from the get. they wait til you are old
and angry enough to understand them,
wait til you turn into a teenager
with your own tough skin raised in spots
from accidental oil spills and sharp fangs that spit
acid and salt seasoned words at parents
for fucking them up just right.

Entry 2: from John Poch's The Blue Angels
"Did God make them?/ They blanket, carpet, cover us/ at the air show. Decorators/ with a vengeance. So this is why/ the sky is blue."

The sky is blue because God said so.
There is rain because God's garden needs water,
or He saw His kids fighting, saw them cutting down
trees or something, stop asking for details,
He just was crying. That's just how it is.
The snow is His dandruff, covering us
in a blanket, a carpet, decorating our cities
with His glorious waste and forgiveness;
there's no Head and Shoulders in Heaven-
'cept His, of course, He has a head. Shoulders, too.
Dandruff is like vengeance too though- like,
gross and stuff. Thunder is God bowling,
or beating His wife, or yelling at people
who beat their wives, making them feel bad.
Night happens because God needs a nap. Dark
happens because God said so. And Jesus is in
time out, in the bathroom, with the lights off.
Of course God has indoor plumbing. God lets
the sun shine because His favorite color is yellow.
It's cloudy because God thinks we need a blanket
for when it's cold. And it's cold because
He's mad at us, and He said so. And then,
of course... What's lightning? Everybody knows that one.
God loves to disco.

Imitation Entries Week 5

Entry 1: from Crows by Eric Smith
"The day can't black out/ the empty hours that are too much/ themselves, but in the ruckus/ of their flapping, we may find/ the hollow bones of our collapse."

In the ruckus of their hollow black outs, the hours
are too much. We find them collapsing like sand
castles and they find themselves guilty of too much
flapping and crying like babies- we can't help you.
We lock him for hours in the bathroom, find the blood
on his front leg where the bone sticks out, ring out
washcloths and regret, wipe off face with alcohol,
stare into those his eyes, black like he is in a room
with no light or love or mom because she left, turned
off the lights to save energy and so they would know
she wasn't coming home. He was a scarecrow and now
he is a pile of hay in the front yard, or bathroom,
i guess. He let them let him bite the dust.

Entry 2: from Various Readings of an Illegible Postcard by Christine Hume
"I sing or swing, Let's keep her dear!"

I sing or swing or put on my rings
laid inside hair ties on the vanity
or sometimes the bathroom sink, too
close to the toilet and hair dye but
near the hairbrush i keep forgetting
to use, abuse my toothbrush again
this morning like every other, wear
out bristles and whistle with the White
Album, songs without meaning or all
meaning, I'm still trying to figure out
how to get to the Glass Onion because
it sounds like a nice place to meet
Julia, my dear, let's keep it, that
periwinkle promise love gives or takes
or whatever it is we think we are doing.
I just want to know why this song always
skips but play it again, dear. I will sing
about how we were before when you spent
the night on my couch, all nights, most
nights spent awake until five or seven
or whenever the world we didn't like
would wake up and cook breakfast, our
midnight snack, i snatched you away
from the rest of the world because
they don't know our song and they don't know
anything. I will sing
to you and Ringo if he asks me to even
though he is my least favorite, like everyone
else i know or care to know- no matter
what they tell you i wrote it for you
and Green will always be your song.

Imitation Week 4

Entry 1:
Riff off Andrian Matejka's "Landscaped Postcard as Jimi Hendrix" part 2
"Dear Manic Depression,"

Dear Manic Depression,
Jimi was being polite. You’re a real asshole.
You keep me awake on the good days, the sun shoots its fingers through cloud breaks to touch
my blonde fur and leaves honey suckle kisses on my cheeks. All the trees wave me Good Mornings
and I cry because my chest hurts from swallowing the colors and the whole sky before
noon and I panic like a hummingbird locked in an airport bathroom and there you are, religious
mother in law, gum on the subway rail, heel in the sewer grate, gristle in these chicken nuggets
I waited all week to put in my mouth, your other half, uncomfortable and unwelcome,
and I forgot how to get out of my bed this morning because you slept there. And I forgot
how to fly. Well, I think I’ll go turn myself off. Thom Yorke told me, by way of a friend,
“be constructive with your blues.” So, I wrote you this letter, my partner in
everything. Listen up, asshole. We need some time apart.

Entry 2:
From Adrian Matejka’s “What the Dead are Mission Out On”
“Permanence, like the stains on a motel pillow./ Her voice, whoever she was.”

Whoever she was, she wasn’t what he expected
behind Door Number 2- A car, maybe. A dishwasher
or a nice china set, but a woman? In a black dress like moon
kissed diamond walkways like they have out in California,
she stood there and he thought about the one that did not get away
but walked away rather, slow without slamming doors or
singing curses, slow like how your mom tells you in third grade
not to pull off the Band-Aid. She left him with Better As Friends
and I Care About You Too Much To Let You Love Me, that,
and a plum dab of impermanence on his neck from the night
a week ago before her voice turned into a pillow stain on hand stitched corners.
All he had was an empty tank and no seatbelts- and the lady behind
Door Number 2. And he thought, this is what the dead are missing out on-
Lucky bastards.

Imitation Entries Week 3

Both of this week's entries come from Adrian Matejka's "Mixology."

Entry 1:
From "Winter / Weird Fishes"
"Every morning, you loiter/ like a middle-aged sugar mama/ once the sun's up, hoping/ to be more than a meal ticket."

Every morning, I loiter, a middle-aged
Go-nowhere, do-nothing kinda way about
my life and these streets, sidewalk I walk
when the sun comes up, and I’m hoping,
you’re hoping to buy my meal ticket for
Tuesday, not that I asked, I just assumed,
assuming you’ll be around this side
of town, of sidewalk to talk, talk about
sun’s and sons and Sons and meals,
but I always turn it into me-alls and I know
that, know that I’m sorry. I know you’re not
anyone’s sugar mama, but I would be your sugar,
Mama. I know you better than you know I do,
don’t know when I’ll know about anything more
than loitering and leaving, leaving you
in the dust of my transgressions, sweeping
up sidewalk chalk and negative talk. I’m sorry
I forgot my wallet, I told you that but you know,
knew I’d do this. I always do this, don’t do
anybody any good, just loitering, littering,
pitter pattering and taking up the space
and leaving you in space, my sun.


Entry 2:
From "An Old Hand"
"But this man shook my hand/ like he was the lucky one./ Instead of that being me,/ counting up my nickels/ at the end of the day, hoping/ they make some kind of sense."

They make some kind of sense, I guess, nickels but who needs ‘em? Who needs me,
Weak in the knees, Snickers kneads my abs like a baker, a broker (I’m overdrawn
$1.27) broken by an office space, a space ship, a ship wreck and I can’t do it anymore.
It’s never hot enough and you’re always on fire. I’m not paranoid but I have this pair
of noisemakers… I’ll sell them to you, your lucky day, my luck is changed from that time
I paid my rent in nickels in dimes, spending too many fives on dime bags and sorority hags,
haven’t cut my hair in months and I think my mom hates me now. He was the lucky one,
didn’t have to do nothing but be born. That man, at the end of the day, he’s the lucky one…
A right hand man, didn’t do nothing to deserve it, just be born was all… instead of that
being me, it was him, the lucky one. But Disaster don’t care about your luck. She asked
for him by name because it was her turn. Man then me, she said, man then me, she managed
to mask it by playing on your superstitious “when you turn fiftyish” and he didn’t even
know if that word was real but he knew her real well and she always
make some kind of sense.

Imitation Entries Week 2

I think last week was more of an imitation whereas this week, I'm going to go with more of an improv kind of thing. I'm still getting the hang of it... and this blogging thing... I'm used to livejournal. Forgive my incompetence.

Entry 1:
This one needs a preface since it isn't really specific in the syllabus what I am allowed to riff off of... I'm improving from the first (?) draft - page 142 in WP- of Trista's "Persephone" because I liked the sounds.

Beginning lines of Trista's draft... "Things that crack, things that fracture:/ show me a book, pages and pages of/ millions and millions of/ fragmented lives who give up, are given up,/ forgotten of, forgotten to."

Forgotten of and forgotten to, two of them size 7 left
for dead on the corner of Telegraph and Russell
and the sophomore with the purple hair picked them up -
because they were her size (almost) - on her way,
her way to the Buddhist temple you see after the arch
way of posies and pansies and princess flower, glory bush, purple glory
bush, purple glory she wanted them all to be purple.
All of it, all of everything, the purple everything
she wanted to carry around in her pocket because
everything fits in her pockets with the picture of her mother
and the note she found "written by jeff." dave was our
street jesus, jesus christ! Christ is somebody that gave
up. That's not how I would write the gospel. Did you see it?
On the history channel? I wanted to brush her hair and make her
lunch because i know jesus won't, because he's broken, because he broke
up with her when she was twelve and took her mom
because he could. He had, what, five punctures? but she had a million,
a million! The holes from before left in the crease of her speghetti elbows
and she's like Jesus, too. She doesn't know but she is
my Christ, my Dave, my Mom. Electric.

Entry 2:
Sheshy- If you read this, it's funny because I ended up using your concern for my discomfort from Friday. I didn't actually feel this way. Inspiration.

From "Aubade" by Philip Larkin (page 133 in WP)
"I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare."

Half-drunk and second hand smoked out
because I'm first hand allergic and dependable,
depending on the day (Mondays- I'm free).
She doesn't mean to wake me but it's four
in the fucking morning and I can't sleep
with this stench of dependence in my hair
and her legs wrapping mine, tight ballerina thighs
I've known for a decade, a decade with my tiny dancer,
her heartbeat the cadence of mine. All I want
is to sleep on the couch by myself, by my
self. We'll tell each other stories before we fall
asleep. I'll tell me my secrets because I, you, I
already know them.

But she's here and she won't leave
because I asked her to come, come out
from some dark place into my dark place
because my pillows are handmade and I thought
I was lonely. But I had myself, my self and me
don't need nobody else. I've been screaming
since we were just two kids but you don't listen
because I never made you. But you made you
love me. And I made you make me and we made
nothing our best friend. We're nobody together,
and nobody likes to sleep alone without the neighbors
and red fox dogs like busy bees in tree trunks,
the one that killed the boy with the glasses
and we raised our glasses to not
being killed.

But you're killing me. And I let you.
Because I'm half drunk and out of shampoo
and I can't look into those glaciers on your face
and say good bye or even good night. you know
the night isn't good because I'm half drunk
and I drunk half that bottle myself
to forgive you so you would give me
what I needed, somebody to keep me
from myself, my self, the only girl
i loved. and loathed. loathed like that wart
on my elbow they burned off and that skin
burned and i could smell it for weeks
haunting my nostrils and burning my boogers
to a crisp with that stench.

it's four in the morning and i can't count sheep,
i don't remember what they look like or why they
look like sheep. why we would count an animal
when we could count each other... there's two of us
or three. you, me, and myself. my self. my self.

Imitation Entries Week 1

Entry 1: Going off Professor Dr. Katie Chaple's poem on pg 74...

Across the sucrose stained countertop, I am waiting
for a middle aged paper pushing divorcee to ask
for what I already know he wants, White Chocolate Macadamia
and a Sugar cookie, for his four year old, who
"gets her attitude from her mother,"
while giving me a toothy grin and an eyebrow
that asks if I'm interested
and I wonder, what if,
what if, I pushed against this crumb caked tile
and sprung against the counter shoving my fist
toward his mouth, scattering napkins and straws
causing security to abandon their segways to do an actual job, for once,
just for being like every other scummy man his age
who thinks he can talk to a 20 year old girl
like she would be lucky to sleep with him?
And I wonder if his wife left him
or if he left her for somebody
like me, like a child. Did he want someone younger
or dumber? For someone who wouldn't mind
the 300 calorie snack he feeds his fat daughter?
I click the side of my purple phone to light up the time
and wait, like I have for four years, for this man
to ask me for what he wants
so I can give him what he wants
or at least part of it.

Entry 2:
Working with the poem "Paramour" by Angie Estes on pg 67

Named for a Shakespeare's shrew
they called me "Kate,"
and just that, which means
"pure" in some
language that isn't my own.
Named me, after a girl,
(a girl!) with a screw
or two loose, bad
tempered and stubborn.
The truth is, I didn't have
a say in the matter.
He named me as I appeared
to be, and I guess
he knew before I had a chance
to change his mind.
Who doesn't want
to be called something
other than the name
we're give? The older
I grew the more I proved
that a rose by any other name
would be a different
flower. Daddy
could have called me
Juliet, or Bianca.
But I was named for
the bitch in the story,
the too true screw loose
shrew in desperate need
of an attitude adjustment.