Giraffes

The second of my memories with Mcartny.

I love the zoo, though it breaks my heart to see the animals in their concrete habitats. I ache with the beauty of these powerful animals in their long-suffering under hot suns, and I love them. Their spirits we don’t understand.

Today I am at the zoo with my aunts and cousins. Mcartny is five. And sassy. And impatient. She does not want to stand overly long to see the animals. They fascinate her long enough for her to know they have stripes or spots. Long enough to know they swing from trees and trumpet from their trunks. Then she moves on.

When we get to the giraffes, we do not want to leave. We stare at the mother and her baby in a way that would embarrass us if they were human. We admire the variance in the colors of their coats. I say “Did you know their horns are actually made of hair?” We watch to see the subtle shifts of the muscles in their thick necks. The curve of their backs. Their lashes—so long. The proportion of torsos to legs. Their bubblegum tongues. Their eyes are brown—slow and peaceful.

Mcartny pushes her mother to move on, pulling and pouting. Her mother says, “Hold on. I want to stay and watch the giraffes. I just can’t get over how beautiful they are.”

Mcartny commands, “Well get over it.”

My laugh is only stifled by the sad implications of her statement and the longing for the day when, like giraffes and the other animals her brown eyes will be slow and peaceful, beautiful in long-suffering, stopping to admire the giraffes.

Jars of Honey

I close at the night,

petals folding inward

on a picked-over heart--

the exhausted nectar

I refuse to share

anymore from my lips,

you drank with a thought-kiss.

The dark and fragile petals protect me from

Your honey for my pain.

Crown Burger

We’re at Crown Burger again—my older brother and I. Our little brother is with us. We just got out of being stuck in traffic for hours, and I’m late for work. Despite being tired from sitting in a car for so long, we are all in a good mood, laughing, teasing, joking. My brothers are trying to see who can insult the other one best. They have just used their favorites: “butt-sniffer” and “If I had a dog with a face like yours, I’d shave its butt and make it walk backwards.”—both of which they have stolen from the film Sandlot. No matter how crude they get, they think they are hilarious. As usual, my little brother cannot stop laughing. He struggles to stand up or walk straight as we walk into the restaurant. As we are eating, my manager calls me to find out where I am, and I tell her I am almost there. I shush my brothers quiet with a hand and wide eyes. Hopefully, my manager thinks the background noise of order numbers over a P.A. and music are only from a car radio. Still, my brothers are laughing. Today, I am not the sister who goes away and returns to interrupt their lives every summer. Right now, we are laughing, laughing, laughing—so tired, we are silly.

Bourbon Lake

My father and I have gone camping. Us two. Together we drive away from the suburbs. Sometimes talking. Sometimes silent. We hike the same trail we hike every year, careful not to catch our fishing poles on branches or bend them on rocks. They are all colors, the rocks: gray, red, dun. They are like the dead with their secrets. Never talking, always silent. Geologists say their lines are a history book in stone. But I know these rocks aren’t telling. They sleep, silent bellies of the mountain rising from the dirt. We climb over them, their cool roughness presses against our hands. I feel them breathing; we keep quiet with them.

The mountain levels and lifts the stream, her finger, to her lips and beckons us to a nearby pond. The little pond bubbles beneath the sky and mountain, her fish untouched for months by passing fisherman looking for the larger lake. Ripples mean the fish are hungry. Again and again we see them risk open air for a fly.

Raising my right arm into the sky, I swish my pole back and forward—watching, hearing the line slide through the air, I pull the yellow cord greedily with my left hand. Amidst a spectrum of green from the deep color of the spindly pines to the just-a-touch green of the grasses reaching past my ankles, I perfect my technique, looking for the perfect “s” shape of the line to swim through the sky before it hits the water.

Secretly, I do not wish to catch any fish. Or if I do, I secretly wish they will get away before I can bring them into shore. I do not like to touch their seizing, panicked bodies. Do not like their eyes on me in confusion, asking why, their gills—how they shudder in the terror of not being able to pull oxygen from the air. I am afraid to touch them.

A few do not get away and I must call out to my father, across the pond, to come remove them from my hook while I hide my eyes.

Reunion Over Good-Byes

Today, I learn why my brother will sometimes say to me “Ciao, Juan” pronounced "zh-whan"-- one syllable.

Years ago we were friends—me sitting in his room, talking to him, he driving me to school every morning.

Four years away, we are like those friends again. He has taken me to his favorite restaurant/fast-food joint—the one where, man of simple tastes, he says he wants to have his wedding reception. Crown Burger, it is called. He brought me here to say good-bye, before I leave and it is as if we are not friends again.

Tired for reasons I don’t remember, I say to him “Tell me a story” over my veggie burger and onion rings with fry sauce.

“What kind of a story?”

“A mission story.”

These years are the lost years—the years we became not friends. Those years we “grew apart”—literally growing up 5,000 miles from each other. Today, I ask him to tell me about those years.

Though he does not know it, my brother is an excellent story-teller, and soon I am encapsulated by different air—warm and sprinkled with salt. The booth where we sit flickers like a lightbulb and becomes a cobbled, Portuguese street, the urbane adjacent to the antique. Even his words are laced with the promise of a distant countryside and culture I never knew.

He tells me stories of Juan, the man who acted like a boy, who always hung around. The man whose father left him on a street corner, whose brain he used as a pincushion for drugs. My brother saw him so often saying goodbye to Juan became a reflex. Now, when he says good-bye to me in Portuguese, he cannot help but say “Ciao, Juan.” Though Juan’s story is sad, we are laughing because he is funny for reasons I do not remember.

We are just laughing, and the booth comes back. Now we are two friends laughing in a booth, so hard I fear fry sauce will come out my nose like peach snot. Right now, those lost years don’t matter anymore. We are two siblings, friends, laughing over stories and peach-colored snot.

The Angels are Melting

The first of my memories with Mcartny.

This is Mcartny’s second winter. Walking, still a little wobbly, she says to me “Play? Snow?” This is before prepositions. All words are new. A master of intonation, she only needs to use a few. Her question becomes a chant. Her baby-fat cheeks ask “Play? Snow?” on repeat. We gather sweaters and socks. Put on coats, boots, gloves. In the backyard we make a snowman. I teach her how to make snow angels. The backyard becomes a choir of them. A cherubic children’s choir in the snow. Sniffles from a cold nose drive us in. We step between our winged imprints to not disturb their song.

Memories for the Afterlife

For my both my honors and my senior theses, I spend what is probably an unhealthy amount of time thinking about death.

I'm also incredibly lazy and think watching films about death can be considered "research."

When I first heard of the Japanese film Afterlife, I was a little hesitant, unsure of what I could expect--thanks in part to the website WTF Japan, Seriously?!. There are some things about the Eastern cultures that Western minds don't quite understand, hence this website. I didn't want to watch a film that turned out to be just one giant WTF. However, the premise sounded interesting:

Over the span of a week, twenty-two souls arrive at a way station (which looks like an old junior high school) between life and death, where they are asked to choose just one memory to take into the afterlife. (Synopsis c.o. fandango.com becaused the imdb one was lame.)

I knew that I was at least interested in the idea of a liminal space--the way station--between life and death, a common theme in A LOT death scenes depicted in both literature and film , so I decided to give it a shot.

I was not disappointed. First of all, the film was visually beautiful. Obviously, a lot of attention was paid to the parallels between color palette and plot/theme. The simplicity of the sets and shots imbued a sense of humanity into this film where everyone is literally dead. The acting was subtle and restrained--the kind of restrained that bursts emotion and secrets. And even though the acting gave some secrets away, there were still at least two plot twists I wasn't expecting. And the more I thought about the premise of this film, the more I began to rethink my thesis. Of all the things I have read and watched, I think that this has perhaps had the most influence on my thesis's actual plot.

Besides the influence on my work, for weeks, I've been thinking about the premise of the film as it applies to my own life. If I could only choose one memory from this life to relive for eternity, what one would I choose? I came up with a "short list" of memories before finally choosing one. I don't personally believe that I'll only be able to have one memory in the afterlife, but if I'm wrong, at least I'll be prepared.

The list of memories included:

Three with my cousin Mcartny

One with my mother

One with my father

Two with my brothers

and one from W&L.

While making the list, true to form, I decided to use the memories as a writing exercise--recreating them in words chez my latest Sam Shepard read Day Out of Days because the style is a stretch for me, and I want my writing muscles to all be well-toned.

I understand it's a bit of a tease to talk about these things without sharing them. Most importantly, I think they prove an important point--one the movie also highlighted--The most poignant memories don't come from life's big events, but from cross-sections of everyday moments, exposing the cells wherein our existence hangs in suspension.

Therefore, I present my latest series: Memories for the Afterlife.

Memory with my Mother

I’m in grade school, and my mother is driving me into town in our green Isuzu Rodeo. At the stop sign in front of the capitol building, my stomach drops in anticipation. We turn right onto a downhill lane protected by a web of tree branches. The sun shifts past breaks in the leaves—lace reflecting off the asphalt. We cry out “Wheeeee” the whole way down, like we’re on a roller coaster.

Thoughts While Reading "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" in English 362: American Romanticism (9-12)

9

Closer yet I approach you;

What thoughts you did not have of me, I had of you—I looked out prematurely;

I considered you before you were formed in this belly.

Who could have known what should move me?

Who knows if I’m enjoying this?

Who knows what I am doing right now, while I know what of you?

It is not us both alone;

Not a few classes, or summers, or generations;

It is that each will come and go according to its whims,

From the unidentified center of it all, and in synecdoche:

Everything signifies, the smallest things, and the largest things;

An inexorable fog encircles all, and encircles the Soul for a time.

10

Now I am curious what sight could ever be more stately and admirable to me than my white-columned university,

My river and my woods, and my scallop-edg’d mountain-hills,

The finches fluttering their bodies, the black-board in the morning, and the walnut lecturn;

Curious what Gods can exceed these who stand before me, and with voices I respect question me boldly and loudly on a poem as I straighten in my seat;

Curious what is so slight that—undetected—it connects me to those beings who surround me,

Which binds me into you as you read, and pours my feeling into you.

We understand then, do we not?

What I knew, there sitting and reading, do you not know?

What this reading could teach—if you were willing to read through experience and Whitman’s wisdom, is taught, is it not?

What the push of reading could not start, is started by me personally, is it not?

11

Breathe on, bodies! Breathe with the body-tide, and learn with the tried-tide!

Stand tall, spiraled and scallop-edg’d mountains!

Delightful dews of the dawn! Dampen my ankles with your light, and the men and women generations after me;

Cross from building to building, countless crowds of students!

Stand fast, white columns of the institution!—stand fast, bricked buildings of Lexington!

Throb, tired and curious scholar-brain! throw out questions and answers!

Suspend from here forward, eternal grasp of possibility!

Survey, moon-rimmed but eager eyes, in the classroom, or the street, or party!

Sound out, voices of academics! loudly and energetically question me on my understanding!

Live, old life! Study that part that looks back on the learner!

Play the part, the part of consequential or trivial, as we decide!

Consider, you who peruse this, and Whitman together, whether we are not now looking upon you;

Fly-on, morning birds. fly backwards, or carve ripples in the clouds with your wings;

Seize even November, you hills. and earnestly hold it, till skyward eyes embrace and share it with you;

Radiate, cold morning light, from my waking face, or anyone’s face, in the reflecting windows;

Come on, newly-wakened students. Do not just pass by the blackboard, the walnut lectern.

Bustle away, you books of all disciplines. material or experiential;

Light dormant chimneys, you sun! Cast your flicker of marigold! Cast white and mellow blue over the tops of trees;

Appearances, now and hereafter, indicate what you are;

You inexorable fog, continue to encircle the soul;

In my body for me, and your body for you, be resting our sweetest liquors,

Thrive, classrooms! bring your students, bring your lectures, ample and scholarly musings;

Expand, being that which none else is perhaps more intangible;

Keep your places, objects than which none other is more steadfast.

12.

We descend upon you and all things—we capture you all;

We realize the soul only through you, you constant tangibles;

Through you color, form, presence, transcendency, identity;

Through you every picture, likeness, and all the indications and resolutions of ourselves.

You have waited, you always wait, you dumb, beautiful tutors! you neophytes!

We receive you with open minds at last, and are keen henceforward;

Not you anymore shall be a mystery to us, or resign yourselves from us;

We use you, and do not ignore you in us—we plant you permanently within us;

We measure you not—we love you—there is perfection in you;

You are a four-year eternity;

Consequential or trivial, you form these parts of our soul.

Thoughts While Reading "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" in English 362: American Romanticism (5-8)

5

What is it, then, between us?

What is the count of the scores or hundreds of years between us?

Whatever it is, it avails not—distance avails not, and place avails not.

6

I too lived—Lexington, of ample hills, was mine;

I too walk’d the paths of this university, and strolled in the woods around it;

I too felt the uncertain sharp questionings stir within me,

In the day, among throngs of students, sometimes they overcame me,

In my walks to classes, or as I study in my carrel, they overcame me.

I too had been struck from the day forever held in motion;

I too had receiv’d a self by my Body;

That I was, I felt in my body—and what I would be I knew I would be of my body.

7

It is not upon you alone the frantic deadline falls,

The deadlines have fallen—too soon—upon me also;

The best I had done seem’d to me unfinished and doubtful;

My great thoughts, as I supposed them, were they not in reality mediocre? Would not professors dock me?

You alone do not know what it is to be afraid;

I am she who knew what it is to be afraid;

I too danced in time to uncertainty,

Stress’d, blanch’d, worried, cheated, envied, frustrat’d,

Had spite, anger, menacing, vain wishes I dared not think,

Was disgusted, selfish, desolate, suspicious, shy, dissatisfied, powerless,

The hyena, the doe, the sloth, not lacking in me,

The brooding expression, the sharp word, the sinful wish, not lacking,

Objections, disappointments, failings, eagerness, sympathy, none of these lacking.

8

But I was studently, naïve and proud!

I was question’d on a poem I didn’t understand by the menacing voice of an aging academic as he saw me cowering as I was sitting,

Felt the eyes of others’ on my neck as I answered, or the indifference of their attention on me as I sputtered,

Saw many I knew in their seats, or outside, or in the hall, yet to whom I’d never spoken,

Lived the same life with the rest, the same old studying, sleeping, eating,

Act’d the part that still looks back on that learner,

The same common role, the role we make our own, as consequential as we like,

Or as trivial as we like, or both consequential and trivial.

Thoughts While Reading "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" in English 362: American Romanticism (1-4)

1.

Body-tide surround me! I step in time with you;

Trees in the east! Sun there near and hour high! I step in time with you also.

Herds of young students accoutered in the usual fashions! how strange you seem to me!

In the wood desks, the ten and ten and five that sit, beginning class, are more foreign to me than you might suppose;

And you that cross through this door years away are less to me, and less in my contemplations, than others right now.

2.

The unidentifiable substance of me from somewhere, in all seconds and hours of day;

The modest, cut, well-planned design--myself a piece, but everyone also a part of the design;

The countenance of the past and whisper of the future;

The acheivements hung like string-lights beyond my line of sight but luminous--on the clean

chalkboard, and the paper notebooks open to a fresh page;

The bodies "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" with me, taking me away;

The ones who follow me, these words between me and them;

The certainty of these words--the sight, the sound, the meaning of them.

Others will sit in these chairs, and cross through that door;

Others will write upon that blackboard;

Others will open their notebooks to fresh pages, ready to be filled with someone else's thoughts;

Others will read this poem attentively or no;

Twenty years away, others will teach them as they read, the sun almost an hour high;

Fifty years away, or perhaps even a hundred years away, others will teach them,

Will enjoy the morning, will enjoy the body-tide, the reading of the poem confusing the now-

still body-tide.

3.

It means nothing, this room, this hour--place means nothing;

I am here, you students of a graduating class, and all your class after;

I read myself into your lecture, and return again and again as I read--with you.

Just as you looked when you looked out the window onto grass and brick, so I felt;

Just as you were one of a class, I was one of a clas;

Just as you were waking in the too-early morning, so was I waking,

Just as you filled your notebooks with things you did not think or say, so I filled mine with comments equally unthought;

Just as you read these free-verse words about humanity's shared flow and ebb, I read.

I too, and numerous times came to campus, the sun less than an hour high;

I watched the finch tottering in the trees, say them flapping and hopping, fitting his wings through branches and over still-dewy soil,

I saw their umber colors and their flashes of color shimmer in the morning sun,

I saw them rousing about, gradually opening with us the day.

I saw the reflection of the room in the cool window,

my image faint against the background of the glass, but bright,

looked at the hovering film of sun sheening there and turning a pale scene in the clear mirror,

look'd at the dark bricks and trees beyond to the north and northwest,

look'd on the fog as the rising heat dispelled it to only dew,

look'd toward the box room to notice the arriving students,

Saw them waking up, saw those who sat near me,

Saw their gray slate of the board--saw bodies anchored to chairs,

The students at writing in their notebooks, or listening with varied attentiveness,

The indigo-cupped eyes, the linear motions of pens in hand, the metal coils binding paper,

The shift and shuffle of uncomfortable seats, the students in their desk-houses,

The white dust left by chalk, the quick scribble to catch axioms of knowledge,

The bustle of pages turning, the surrendered open of bindings,

The distant scallop-edg'd hills through the window, the open books, the militant ink and matte,

The stretch of desks in rows of cherry-varnish shimmer, the painted cinderblock lining of exterior walls,

In the room the lighted group, the long scholar-rows flanked on each side by another--the b blackboard, the walnut lectern,

On a neighboring hall, the sun lights dormant chimneys burning high and full into the morning,

Casting its flicker of marigold, contrasted with lively white and mellow blue light, over the tops of trees, and down into the clefts of hills.

4.

These, and all else, were the same to me as they are to you;

I project myself a moment to tell you--also I return.

I loved well these halls;

I loved well the stately and abiding columns;

The professors and students I saw were all near to me;

Others the same--others who think back on me, because I thought forward to them;

(The time will come, though I stop here this morning and night.)

Pulled Apart by Daisies

How dulcet and downy these pure white blooms,

and bright with honeysuckle heart.

Halos in a meadow verdant

on a casual afternoon.

With their button eyes, they bewitch--invite--

to guard our unwary repose,

hamocked in a grassy nimbus,

while plucking their petals alate.

But to icy fingers their petals transform,

and with cold fervor into "nots"

our peachy love-flesh is torn--

an unrequited holocaust.

You say with harsh finality:

We were pulled apart by daisies.

When Poems Procreate

I love it when my poems get procreative.

While I loved a lot of things about my May 13th poem, I liked it in pieces. There were some lines I loved too much to discard. Instead of "murdering my darlings," I gave them their own poems.

The first grew out of a revision exercise where I began by writing the poem backwards. It's a revision technique I particularly like, because it opens my work up to a lot of new meanings. I call this one "Worry Habit."

I used to know
what unquiet thoughts
would make you
put down the guitar,
loved in calloused hands,
and make you pick at your nails
instead of the soothing strings,
unable to distract you,
even now.



The next is "Missed Communication"

When words neglect emotion
you speak in notes
plucked with frenzied fingers
saying better and faster than your mouth can move.

Against the guitar your torso lies still
and says nothing of what is in your head
but the song you play
again, again, again.

You sing in strings with a vibrato
I do not understand
and a tone I cannot touch.

You beg me to hear your tune,
and I do,
I just wish these were words I knew.



The final poem I titled "Homeless."

You are the place I once called "home,"
the scent of May and
a southern sun on the back porch,
the tree outside my window
whose branches hum me to sleep.

I felt it in my body
lying still
to experience the senses of awake
and lying there
I fall asleep.

You are still "home,"
but now you are twenty-four-hundred miles away
and I walk through you in memories
smelling of dreams
where the scent of May has dissolved,
and the sun never sets behind the house and,
cut down, the trees don't sing.

I remember what it was like
to feel you,
but memories are too insubstantial
to touch and be touched.

Unicorn Meat

Somewhere a virgin is traumatized.

We used her as bait for our feast-hunt,

and shot the unicorn who pillowed

his head in her chaste lap.

A  fine meal for our fete,

we lusted after the innocent, 

tender flesh in our mouths,

and sucked the juice from the

insides of our cheeks.

We fattened our lungs with its mystical spice,

clinging to our ribs. 

We ate the sweet body

for forgiveness from our sins,

the manna taste of immortality,

divinity on our breath--

the immaculate animal bringing us 

closer to heaven. 

A bloodied skirt banners our thirst for unicorn meat. 

Post-scripted Poems

Not usually a procrastinator, I'm making my way through endless stacks of peer's poems--poems from my spring term "Poetic Forms" course, poems I should have decorated with my comments long ago, because I have so much authority on the subject. The poems are due for return to the poets tomorrow, and I have roughly 60 poems to go. For each poet, I've made a neat, stapled pack of all their poems to give back. In only a four week class, I don't know any of them very well. I know some by their consistent vernacular or voice, the font they habitually use--Julie always uses Calibri, at which, as a Cambria girl, I detest to look. I've spoken to Chris once or twice. He game me a ride home once when it rained, even though I clearly had an umbrella and there wasn't much more than a desultory drizzle. Beyond that, I don't know these people well enough to give them anymore than a smile or an awakward and forcedly-enthusiastic "Hey" when we pass one another on campus, so I don't know why I'm bothering to spend an hour giving each person feedback on their poems, but I am. I want them to do well on their final, and somehow I think my comments will help them make good revisions (I later learn that for most, they don't). 

 I slash and underline and emoticon (yep!) my way through their poems, struggling to find anything constructive to write on some of them because they are so obscure or unclear. As I critique Antoinette's (yes, that is her real name) poems, I feel compelled to comment on her talent for word choice (as if the professor hasn't done that enough already). Really, I secretly don't like this girl because people mistake her random smattering of words as "fresh language". My language would probably be just as fresh if I picked words out of my biology textbook too. 

Regardless of where she gets her material, it still works for her, and I feel like I should tell her. 

After going through all her poems, I write a small postscript on the front page of the packet, which I begin with a generic line that says something like, "I've really enjoyed having this class with you" as if I'm fourteen and writing in the yearbook of a classmate with whom I've only pretended to be friends all year. 

When I finish with Antoinette's I decide I need to do that for everyone, because I don't want anyone to feel left out. Simultaneously, I gag, reminded that this is exactly the type of thing that gets me labels like "sweet" and "adorable"--both labels I hate. More than this, I know that I am acting exactly the way people outside of Utah think people inside of Utah act--nice, because, well, we do. 

Except I don't feel like a nice person. As I write each postscript, I can think of a lot of other things I'd rather be writing than a compliment. Though I desperately want to write to Julie, "I hate the font you use. It makes me feel an irrational and unwarranted anger that overshadows the warm reception  your careful diction and musical style deserve." Instead I write, "I enjoyed working on the Pablo Neruda presentation with you. You have great insight." I want to tell Chris, "Your feet are HUGE and knobby" because they are and I somehow think something constructive will come out of pointing that out, but I can't think of what that would be, so instead, I thank him again for the ride home. Though I'd like to tell Michael I think he's a tool for imitating e.e. cummings and Robert Hunter, I comment instead about how his work is "adventurous, ambitious, and admirable." It's all these things, but it's also annoying. And for the one kid I just want to tell "You suck," I say "You have a distinctive style!" 

It sounds cheesy and lame to say that I actually care about these people and want them to feel good about themselves, but I do. There are a lot of things about these people that really annoy me and make me never want to see them again, but I know that pointing out how much they annoy me isn't going to do any good just because I am likely to never see them again. Plus, a lot of the things that really annoyed me weren't things anyone could change (like Chris's feet). I don't want these people to leave this class and feel like some girl in the class hated them and only had bad things to think about them. I don't want them to be self-conscious or think they were terrible poets. 

In the end, I remember the goal I set for myself a year ago: to leave things better than I find them. It's a goal at odds with my personality at times, because I do enjoy being blunt with comments like "You're an example of a self-tanner fail." Sometimes, it's necessary to dish out a little tough love, but this situation isn't one of them. 

I didn't get to spend a lot of time with these people due to the structure and length of the course, but as someone who greatly appreciates the art of poetry, I want my peers to have positive associations with their experience with poetry. I knew that even if I don't have any tender feelings for my peers, I did have tender feelings for where each of us were in our progression as poets and for the pieces we wrote (some of which were really bad, including my own work). I know that often times when students don't like a particular subject, it's not because they don't like the material, but because they had a bad experience they associate with it. In this situation, I do not want to become that bad experience. 

So I hand back all those lovingly-commented, postscripted packets. I don't feel like a better person, but at least I acted like one. 

Dear Muse

It's dark in here, without you--
I'm stuck banging around the walls
of my creative corridors,
bashing in windows with the hope
of letting in a little light,
only cutting my hand--which bleeds ink
all over the floor of this asylum.
I crash into furniture uncerimoniously
set in the center of a room--there is no
place to sit or sleep it off, and there's certainly
no glass of warm milk on this nightstand.

I try to feel for a way out, tottering against corners
that don't exist, imagining handles that never come,
reaching above my head for trap-doors that never
existed, or a piece of rope leading to an attic I know isn't there.

The floor-boards mock me
with their cackles and sniggering creaks,
and the clock tsk-tsks away with it's pendulous head
in taunting sympathy. I think "help me" but nothing
breaks his beat. Soon I am full of sounds who
would make a song, but there are too many notes
I can't make out.

I support myself against a wall and wait for morning,
remembering how you control the sun,
and thought you'd take a walk to get some fresh air--
without telling me when to expect you back.

I'm left whimpering into the darkness,
on legs that are too tired,
trying to keep open eyes that are too sleepy,
wishing wishing there were a lightswitch.

Your hands tanned from daily runs, 

soft from reading books but for 

calloused tips you use for guitar picks,

notes and time signatures in your knuckles;

you sing in strings

with a vibrato I barely understand.

You're exotic as the place I used to call

"home"--twenty-four hundred miles away,

once familiar, changing while I'm not there

even if I resist.

You set down the guitar and dig at your nails

--the anxious habit I recognize--

I want to reach across and still your hands

and ask, "What's wrong?"

I used to know the answer to this. 

Far

I have lived too long in the city,

breathing exhaust haze,

seeing cement,

to feel 

meaning 

in the forest

or smell the floral spray

of unaffected life in the country.

Personal Pronouns

For my memoir class, I was asked to write a reflective piece about how I felt about the memoir writing process and which challenges I faced. The hardest thing for me was using "pronouns" so bluntly, when I was used to hiding them in poetry. I wrote a prosimetrum piece about how I dealt with this. This is the poem I included in the piece. 

The elementary teacher banishes “I” from the essay

At an early age—my thoughts are not

Welcome there. Here, in first prose,

Personal reflection has no home.

New writers equal indoctrinated fear of

Deadly sins in “you” “me” “we” “us” “I.”

 

Kill the reader.

 

Death to the author

Before

she is born.

 

I search for room to beat my wings,

A butterfly trapped between two hands,

Twitching in the darkness. Where will this

Transient lay her head? What country

Will open its doors to this refugee—

Exiled from the essay?

 

The one who calls herself “poem.”

 

Here “I” will hide.

I will hide under a 12-point font

Serif canopy, and branches will obscure

And shadow “my” face.

Though “I” am here, the character

Does not have to be me.

 

Here, the personal pronoun is free.

 

My head rests in the refuge of her floating,

Phantasmagoric form—I am and breathe and do

In sonnets and villanelles, blank verse and free.

 

Now you see, but do not know me.

 

I tell out of order myself in poetry’s syntax—

emotion jumbled.

I conceal love in assonance—

internal rhyme unfurl this heart of mine.  

I speak pain in grinding words tortuous—

banging, audible discord.

I cut my memoires where I will with en—

jambment, how I see it.

 

These are my stories, this is my life:

Elegized, versified, meterized.

You think you know the denizen here—

 that these pronouns

“speak to you.”

I only know these voices

 

And those who live here,

For I am not the only one.

 

There are real people here, beneath these lines

they quiver—life shudder beneath the page

they are safe here too, even from themselves.

I have brought them.

 

Others hide with me in this greenworld,

New pronouns under the canopy. They are

“he” and “it” and “she” and “they.”

 

I hide them in ink and metaphor, obscure words.

They will not be found.

 

They do not know themselves behind simile and symbol,

Allegory and synecdoche.

I put all my feelings about them into

Paradox and irony, understatement or hyperbole.

I will write my reflection in meter and tone,

Burning fire into the page with devotion or despair.

 

Do you see the paper rise and fall with their breath?

 

Of course not. You do not know them.

I hide them well,

 

Until “I” return(s) to the essay.

 

Neighboring “memoir” pulls me back to prose.

She extracts these pronouns from their caches

Like grapes in a wine press--she twists.

 

I must be a different kind of honest.

 

This prose exposes my bones to the world.

My life is before you, you can see it pulsing blue

Beneath my skin—blue and scared,

Scared to let you know it.

Scared to let you know these pronouns

Who must see themselves for who they are

In me.

 

I cannot hide them from myself

 

Or from the world.

 

And so I navigate this new land,

Frank in words, but not so frank

That they will sting.

My poetry was sharply honest, but

Not so honest that anyone knew.

 

Now the world can see my heart beating

And see itself pump through

My valves and veins.

 

And I must be careful

Oh so careful

Not to bleed on the world

 

With these personal pronouns.

 

Bugs

I feel bad the conversation always seems to focus on me--what I do, how I feel, what I think. He probes me with questions and walks me through my thoughts. He interprets the things I say and pauses while I look for answers. He knows me because we are "foils" of one another, he says. 

I feel bad the conversation always seems to focus on me.

Or does it?

"Stand in the mulch," he tells me. "I am you, and you are him. Look up at me. Do you have a foundation?"

"No." 

"You can't pull a man out of the sand."

He does not tell just me this. He tells himself this. He does not just walk me through my problems. They are the objective manifestations of his own. My life is the movie that speaks to him. His advice gives him time to think. 

And makes me feel small, so small. It is harsh. Because he knows. And I need to be humbled. He can only tell me, because he's been here before. 

We sit on the front step and watch bugs wiggle their vulnerable bodies along the concrete walk--a city of activity we could crush with our feet at any moment. 

I cannot stop looking at all the bugs. 

"You need to pray." 

"I do." 

"No. Water your pillow." 

Love of an Orchestra

I would be rather ungrateful if I didn't give notice to one of this blog's greatest influences, and the band who, for many months now, has influenced my writing more than any other artist. 

This is from their second album--the one I heard first. It has some of the loveliest instrumentals and lyrics of any album I own, and never fails to make me feel sublime and content. The discovery of this album led me to their debut "Peaceful the World Lays Me Down." While I think "First Days" is their better album, the influence of "Peaceful" on my work can't be ignored. 

Because this band is so influential, I like to keep up on what they're doing, more so than other artists in my iTunes. So today, I went to last.fm to check their page. I  had "Noah and the Wha..." typed into the search when I saw their album cover in the bottom right-hand corner. They are last.fm's Artist of the Week, this week; and I whole-heartedly support the recognition. So, I'm including some links so you can get acquainted with this band I love so much. 

Website: (Obviously, this links you to everything associated with NatW)

http://www.noahandthewhale.com/

NatW actually made  "First Days of Spring" to go along with a film they made. It's quite beautiful and features the entire album with almost no dialogue. View it here.

I also encourage you to spend some time on their blog, which is much more entertaining than a lot of other band websites. It's a receptacle for the band's ideas and whimsies and a joy to read. You can really get a sense of who these guys are. Enjoy it here.

Finally, this website combines NatW with a concept I love the "Take Away Show" or "Concert à emporter." It's really quite ingenious. Bands/artists are invited to come and perform in random places. In the streets, in a bar, an elevator, the metro, anywhere. And they film the whole session. They do almost no editing. It's a collection of raw and spontaneous and beautiful music moments. I encourage you to experience the many artists who have participated in this project, not just NatW. I personally suggest Andrew Bird, whose Take Away Show is particularly magical. But, as Noah is the focus of this post, I direct you here.

Noah is an active band involved in many activities and projects that really showcase their talent. While I don't have the time or space to direct you to all of their projects, I hope I've wetted your appetite. Enjoy!

P.S. In case you're looking for some pretentious but well-researched and thought-out indie musical inspiration, I direct you to the place that first directed me to Noah. TLOBF.COM

Breaking

Broken things make beautiful mosaics

These colors you hate--in my hands I will

make them a new shape. Their cutting edges 

do not fit perfectly, but I fill the gaps between them

and with a little pressing they will hold their place.

I reset and recast your shattered pieces, 

broken things to tend.

I was unyielding and you broke me down 

You snapped them with tender hands,

nothing smashing. You positioned my colors next

to yours, so complimentary; and patted them

in place--gentle setting. 

You reformed and repositioned my fragmented pieces,

broken things you bend. 

We are shards no glue can mend. 

The mortar fuses us together

in floating patterns we could never 

make alone, forming pictures from 

old stones. We make scenes immortal.

Yes, broken things make beautiful mosaics. 

Late Nights Part II

 I debated the transfer for months. When I went home for the holiday break, I almost didn't come back for the next semester. Learning how bad things were over the phone was nothing compared to having to see it. When I came home, the Christmas tree wasn't up. The house was in shambles--like a gypsy camp. My father and brothers were eating fast food every night, while my mother ate only ice cream because there was no other food in the house. We all got a handful of cash for Christmas that year, because Mom couldn't get out of bed to shop and Dad was too tired trying to keep up with everything else. As a little girl, I'd developed a thick skin when something like this happened, but my brothers never had. As I watched them struggle in their public lives because of their home life, I couldn't even fathom leaving at the end of break to start winter semester, let alone going back next year. 

I explained this all to my friend, and with a tone that told me he both did and didn't want to know he asked "So are you going to be here next year?" 

"Yes," I told him. "I'm not going anywhere." I think it was the first time I'd said it out loud. At least, it was the first time it felt real, the first time the decision settled with me right.  

That was when he asked me how it had all started--my mother's illnesses. Our friendship was a pretty young one. We were steadily attempting to make up for it as quickly as we could with long conversations about every subject we fancied. I'd asked him questions like "What's your favorite dinosaur" and "What's your favorite childhood memory?" So many questions I'd asked him, and he'd been so good to answer. When our friendship got stronger, I stopped asking questions. I wanted him to share things because he wanted to tell me and trusted me, not because I'd asked. I'm not the same way. I hide much and give up little. There are some things I'll only share if you ask. And he asked me this one thing, and I couldn't tell him. It was a secret and it hurt. 

We decided to head back from our hike, and our conversation became light again. We were good at that. We never let a heavy conversation turn into an awkward moment. We chatted in our usual fashion, not forcing a subject but freeing it to the leisurely wanderings of whim. I felt particularly light-hearted as I walked back, prancing from stone to stone when we came to the rockier parts of the trail; and mirroring my mood in a dainty step and a bob of my shoulders. 

For the first time in months, I was finally starting to feel okay about my decision to stay. I knew that back home, Mom was doing better--not great, but good. I knew that my family would be okay. I knew that I loved being here and that there was a purpose to my position. I also knew that no one had ever asked me that question about my mom before. No one had ever cared enough to ask, and because of that, he deserved to know. 

"I think I'm ready to tell you about what happened to my mom now." And I did. I didn't cry. I didn't get upset. I didn't let the years of pain and disappointment and burden tell me I had to be sad about this. In that moment, it wasn't a secret that left scars. It was a fact. Simple and honest. I said it as if I were reciting a grocery list or remarking on the weather--not as if I was just giving up the family secret so hush-hush we pretended it didn't exist. 

I haven't told anyone since then, and I don't plan on it. I didn't get over it that day. I still get upset when I think about it. I still blame it for most of my problems. But at that moment, it didn't matter. At that time and place, it wasn't a secret anymore. Sure, it still hurts like hellfire; but at least I know that in some place and time, it doesn't exist that way. I may only carry that with me as a memory, intangible and flighty, but since then I've recreated and reincarnated it. As I relive it, the purpose of things becomes more clear, and I've just begun to connect the coincidences and understand their functions as parts towards a whole. And that's all I'm really getting at--being whole. 

Late Night Part I

This is what a memoir writing class will do to you: 

" If you don't mind my asking, what happened...? To your mom? How did it all start?" It startled me how carefully he asked it. He wasn't asking to pry, or out of curiosity. He asked because he genuinely cared. I sighed and looked out over the cliff where we were sitting at the murky river bobbing below us. 

"I don't know that I can tell you. It's not that I don't trust you, because I do. I've just never told anyone before, and I don't know that I could tell you without crying. I wouldn't want to make this situation awkward for you." But the thing was, I don't think we'd ever felt awkward around one another, and that was how we'd gotten on this subject. All my fronts came down when I was around him. I was so completely comfortable, there was almost nothing he couldn't get out of me if he really wanted to.

I thought back onto how we'd even gotten onto this subject. A series of questions had led me to tell him about my preparations to transfer earlier in the year. He'd asked me about something he'd read that I'd written, a series I titled "Stay," about my back-and-forth struggles to decide whether to remain at school or go home and finish my education there. 

"Earlier this year, I found out that my mother was really sick. My parents had been lying to me about how things were at home. My mother's always been really sick, ya know? She's had anything and everything: ulcers, bad kidneys, complications due to insomnia, sinus problems, sleep apnea..." I kept listing things off, all the things I could remember from 16 years worth illnesses piled in a decaying heap one on top of the other. She didn't have diseases or cancer, she just had a lot of everything else. 

"Growing up, I took care of myself a lot, because she couldn't. I had to do a lot of things children should never be burdened with. But we seemed to hold it together okay. We got through. We functioned. Not well, but we functioned." 

I looked out over the cliff at the blue mountains rising opposite us. Their tree-poked lines sloping through the gray-clouded sky. I couldn't get over how beautiful and perfect this day was. I could have missed this day, I thought. It wasn't until I actually thought that I would be transferring that I truly began to appreciate where I was. It wasn't until I thought I would be forced to leave that I didn't want to. I'd complained plenty of times that the mountains weren't like mountains at all--that they were like large hills, instead. I'd complained about the climate and the humidity. I hated that I could never see the sky because my location in the hills and all the trees were always obstructing my view. I didn't like that I couldn't see stars. 

And then one day, sometime in October, I realized that I may have to leave. It was during a phone conversation with my father that I found out. All phone conversations with my family are about the same. We talk about how church is going, how school is going, and what latest illness has Mom bedridden. So, when Dad had been telling me about Mom being ill, I didn't think it was anything different from what we'd experienced before. Except on this particular day, Dad let it slip that this time, it was different. It think I've subconsciously blocked out how this came about and what exactly was said. All I remember is that I felt my parents had lied to me. I felt they had played down the seriousness of my mother's current condition, because before this conversation, I wasn't concerned. Now, I was scared. And angry. I was angry at myself and my family. I thought How could they not tell me?  and I was angry with myself for abandoning my family. They needed me. Dad was trying to do it on his own. Neither of my brothers could or would help; and here I was, leaving them to fend for themselves. 

That's when I started making preparations to transfer. I'd go live at home and attend school at the nearest university. I'd go back to my old job and take care of Mom. It would almost be like high school all over again. 

I could hear the relief in my father's voice when I told him I'd filled out the transfer application, but I still struggled with the decision. Something told me to stay, but guilt made me want to leave. As I sat next to my friend on the mountain, I realized that I hadn't wanted to leave because of that very moment and what it meant to me--all the things it signified. When I thought about transferring, I suddenly didn't want to leave the landscape about which I'd previously complained, the landscape I was now witnessing. And I didn't want to leave the friendships I'd formed, especially the one with the person sitting next to me. 

Invitation to a Feast

I set the table for you. 

Plates, forks, spoons, and 

knives laid out for your 

feast. 

I drew fresh water from the well 

and walked with the pail digging 

into my hip, where it left a bruise.

At my table, your mouth will never be dry.

I harvested the wheat I ground to make 

the bread, and I put my whole body into it,

that it would rise inside you, perpetually full. 

Your stomach need never ache again. 

I shook down my orchard and 

picked my vines bare. I filled my baskets

until my arms buckled from exhaustion

and my back protested it's bend. 

There is enough to take with you

and fill your cellars through scores of 

summers. 

Come find your fulfillment at my feast

and you will need no new love all your life;

the milk and honey of my assurance will be 

always on your lips, faith and hope will fill 

your belly and you will carry the satisfaction 

of peace with you wherever you go

should you come to my feast.