Improv, Week 10

The 4 o’clock drive thru line at Starbucks on a Sunday afternoon

Line 1:

Behind the old man with a sixty thousand dollar jaguar, she waits.

Members only jacket, a tire fills with air.

Gritting, his sharp yellow teeth match Ralph Lauren shirt.

She wonders what a man driving a sixty thousand dollar car can be so upset about.    

Later:

The car drinks its own milk, purring and content.

Happy as its owner who doesn’t rush to fill her day with nicotine and energy drinks

Instead, the driver sits deep in the woods of Montana feeding sticks into a fire,

Waiting for the speaker to ask its questions with muffled voice and purposeful pleasantries

She fishes and watches baseball games in dugouts constructed of synapses,

Electrical impulses whisk her away to the Middle Ages- all monk robes, dirty sex, chain link and wood.

An impatient honk forces her up two inches.

Scribbling thoughts as she tosses two ripped dollars into the tip jar, happy to pay for the pleasure of waiting, the man behind the counter wants to appease her

“Busy scribbling, so busy” he remarks. “Oh yes, very busy” she says, relaxed.

and wonders if anyone notices

How warm it is in the car with the afternoon sun beating down through the windshield

Breaking the freezing wind outside

Free Entry 1, Week 10

A Bottle of Jack Daniels mixes with Norwegian blood she didn’t know she had

Until two months ago

Now she has a bubble blowing grandmother

Who cried when they met after 31 years

Even though the grandmother, with curly blond hair and a tired look,  

didn’t know who she was.  She grinned with yellow teeth

and the corners felt fakely upturned; forced by antidepressants

and the instinct of someone who has lost recollection

to instead fake a smile.  

Still, she believed somewhere deep inside those tears

Falling down wrinkled pale skin

Lied a memory of her love, long sought

And all this strange grandmother could say is how much this young woman meant to her

How beautiful she was, and sweet

and how the cats outside love flower arrangements and soda.

Junkyard Quote 4, Week 10

Cold War Kids
We Used To Vacation lyrics

I kissed the kids at noon
Then stumbled out the room
I caught a cab
Ran up a tab
On 7th and flower

Best recital I had to ruin
Missed my son's graduation
Punched the Nickles boy
For taking his seat
Gets all that anger from me

Still things could be much worse
Natural disasters on the evening news
Still things could be much worse
We still got our health
My paycheck in the mail

I promised to my wife and children
I'd never touch another drink
As long as I live
But even then
It sounds so soothing
This will blow over in time
This will all blow over in time

I'm just an honest man
Provide for me and mine
I give a check to tax deductable
Charity organizations
Two weks paid vacation won't heal the damage done
I need another one

Still things could be much worse
Natural disasters on the evening news
Still things could be much worse
We still got our health
My paycheck in the mail

I promised to my wife and children
I'd never touch another drink
As long as I live
But even then
It sounds so soothing
To mix a gin
And sink into oblivion

I promised to my wife and children
That accident
Left everyone a little shook up
But at the meetings
I felt so empty
This will blow over in time
This will all blow over in time

Junkyard Quote 3, Week 10

"GOD IS.... (fictional)
Man may be fiction and life and illusion but God will always belove ignoringhim changs nothing."

Gotta love random bathroom stall quotes.

Junkyard Quote 2, Week 10

hmmnn...what is this message, next to my car??

"Nice parking Job asshole
-Santa Claus"

Junkyard Quote 1, Week 10

"dreamless cemetary"

my son came up with this as we left the reading on Wednesday night. Brooke was saying how downtoen Carrollton looked like a dark, spooky graveyard...which prompted out discussion that those words seems "available." So I challenged the kids to think of ways to describe a graveyard that was maybe a little more different or unique. And Aidam came up with dreamless, which I thought was pretty darn cool.

Improv, Week 9

This is actually an improv off of Morgan's piece she submitted for workshop. I liked the idea of a "normal" person wishing for something a little dark and sinister to enter their lives. So I started this piece, which is still a very rough draft.

I need
to be snuck up on, grabbed tightly by the arms
leaving red finger marks like claws
slapped, maybe. Definitely shoved up against a wall, or shoved into a counter
the force leaving a mark.
Taken, not planned
like bologna sandwhiches:
one without crust, the other without mustard
cut into triangles and served with apple slices
no sugar added, 100% fruit juice.
I will cry, bite, kick
feel the flesh and blood collect under painted fingernails
the struggle over him, under him, is the struggle to let go
of all things collected
like hope, and state quarters. We are only missing two-
Puerto Rico and Guam. And Minnesota, for awhile.
But we have American Samoa, isn't that impressive?
Like my balcony, the image I thrust onto the neighbors
lined with solar-powered party lights shaped like Japanese lanterns
and silk flowers that blow slightly in the breeze
nestled into real potting soil.

Free Entry, Week 9

When I am famous,
I will have only one rule, and that will be:
no black.
no black picture on the back cover of my book
no black poetry
no black scarf
no black heels
no black hair, cut short, curly.
no black stare, looking down in some thoughtful contemplaation of death captured
by black and white film through a black lens
rolling, twisted by pale ghangly fingers, the antenneas of a distinguished photographer
who dons a raven-woven turtleneck, matched by sable argyle socks and stygian-framed glasses.
No inky blobs of sorrow, no ebony journal, no obsidian earings that frame a face of slate-dotted pupils.
Not even a starless night will droop from my fountain pen,
which will be
raw umber, asparagus, or thistle.

Classmate Response 2, Week 9

Free Entry 1 (Week 9)

This is a rough first draft, critiques welcomed!

True Falsity

What makes someone love relentlessly?
Have them skirt past the reality of your actions
only believing the lies you told,
even though they know the hiding truth?
What makes someone hate relentlessly?
Focusing on the truth behind those actions,
those lies you told at the beginning,
even though they know the reasons why?

How do you get back there?
To that place where all was cliche,
sparkling red wine, deep maroon sunsets,
those images you were skirting like the plague?
How do you know those were there in the first place?
Did you make them up,
keeping yourself protected, fortressed in
by the fantasy of what could be?

 

My response to Taylor:

There are a couple of things I like here. I like the questions...in the beginning, you pair love with beleiving lies - an interesting way to uncover the theme of love. hdig truth seems odd, I would think about the wording there. You have a couple of recurrances, truth and skirting. The the hate comes in and the poem becomes kind of circular, a "what came first, the lie or the reason behind the lie?" this creatres interest and I think you can expand here if you wish. What was this lie that has formed a wedge between these characters? How do you get back there? I think this last stanza is the most powerful because the reader senses the speaker's urge to go back to the naivity of the new relationship, before she knew "the truth." May of us would claim that we are string and we would stand up for ourselves and run form anything toxic, but "truth" be told maybe what we want more is to just be ignorant again so we dont have to face the pain. The circularity of the piece keeps going around, because then the reader can think "was there ever a lie in the first place, or maybe it was the speaker lying to herself/himself?" Really good for a first draft, I hope you keep working on it!

Classmate Response 1, Week 9

Improving Wk 9

I am about to try the 6 word stories... I don't know how well they are, but that is why it is an improv post.

1. Silence watches the slowly sinking red van.
2. The hands withered under constant pressure.
3. Cold eyes glazes over the crash.

My response to Morgan:

I really like the first one becasue of the imagery and the questions the sentence raises. Silence is a great word to use here because you wonder why it is so quiet after a wreck. Is it a wreck? Maybe its a van beng carried away by a flood and eveyone else is too busy trying to stay alive to notice..or there is so much going on that these individual detaisl can only be noticed by the silence. Why red? Is there anyone inside?
I think this is what a 6 word story aims to achieve -the ability for the reader to vsualize something as well as the ability to raise questions enough to keep the reader occupied long after the 6 words have been read.
In the second one I like the use of the word "withered" I tried doing to 6 word story as well and realized that a)its hard and b) you have to be veryprecise in the words that you choose.
In the third one, I like the cold eyes. But if were talking cars, I like the first one better.

Great attempt!

Calisthenic, Week 9

My 6 word story:

Knotted Nike's swing from telephone wire.

Junkyard Quote 1-4, Week 9

"Put that in your junkyard balls"
My husband, again waking up delirious from sleep saying something and thinking it was clever or funny enough to put in my junkyard. But what I thought was so funny is how he thought junkyard and balls somehow went together.  The kids and I have this game we play where we wake him up and ask him random questions to which he always responds "yes." Daddy, can we adopt a racoon? "yes." Kinda sucky for him, the poor guy, but amusing for us!

"if you read as though/each word is a newborn, read for/the page as it's turning, history fails/like a memory stuttering its vowels."
Proxy, from Ghost season by Melanie Jordan

My mother's laugh in my waking life is harsh, the sound of pebbles being thrown against a metal garage door."
from "Waking Life" by Dionne Irving

"Red is the color of a, rushing into your first words, barbaric and without shame, stamped as it is on report cards and meat."
A from "Consolation Miracle" by Chad Davidson

Classmate Response 2, Week 8

From Daniel's improv:

For this weeks improv. I decided to go back to another piece i was working on and redo another improv, only with different skills. Last time:

Coughing spurts of ink sustaining me.
Compositions, Pens light patchwork that covers the scars
always open. Wondering, do lights pierce
Translucent skin that's distant. Losing feeling
from these blood tipped pencils.
Writing will reconstruct me again. As it always has.

My update

Coughing spurts of ink sustaining me.
Parkers and Waterfords. Fallen trees covering these gashes
newly drained. Wondering, do writers pierce
their bodies when their ready. Spurting emotions
from these blood tipped pens.
Nature will reconstruct me. As the world already realizes

My response:

I remember this one! I have also attempted to start some rewrites and it is not an easy task, trying to figure out what to keep, what to trash, and what you really want to say the second (or third) time around, after the initial “burst” of writing has taken place. I really like the change to "parkers and waterfords"  - it is very specific. "Fallen trees covering these gashes newly drained" is also beautifully written, in my opinion. The meter is in tune with the tone of the piece. The question is a good one - "do writers pierce their bodies when their ready?" But I think you mean they're as opposed to their? Spurting emotions is much more rich both linguistically and visually, and the change from “writing” to “nature” as a healer is very smart. Nature is the healer, writing is the disease. :) "As the world already realizes" is a little clunky on the tongue. I liked the first ending line better "As it always has." So, if anything, I would keep the original or play with that last line a little bit. I think this is a wonderful example of how a poem can evolve in such a thoughtful way. I think professor Davidson is right, too, you wouldn't look at this and see that it is an improv of another piece - it has a life all its own. 

Calisthenics, Week 8

I wanted to try the Synatax mimicry excercise on page 100 of our Poetry book.
"Take a poem you admire and copy it out, leaving blank all the major nouns, verbs and adjectives, but retaining all the syntax, punctuation, and line breaks."

And I drifted away from them, slow, on the pull of the river,
reluctant, looking back at their roost,
calling them what I'd never called them, what they are,
those dwarfed transfiguring angels,
who flock to the side of the poisoned fox, the mud turtle,
crushed on the shoulder of the road,
who pray over the leaf-graves of the anonymous lost,
with mercy enough to consume us all and give us wings.


And I hurdled away from them, nimbly, on the eve of the twilight ,
agog, scanning their frowns,
calling them what I'd never called them, what they are,
those plague-bearing badgers,
who bombard the obliques of trampled souls, the exposed youth,
toiling on the edge of a brighter day,
who crow over the intentions of the silently brilliant,
with hatred enough to break us  all and steal our peace.

Junkyard Quote 4, Week 8

From the movie, "The Way" which I watched today. I liked the movie. This is the part where the travelers on Pilgrimage find Jack (James Nesbitt) is an Irish travel writer who when younger had desires to be great author like Yeats or Joyce but never wrote the novel he dreamed of. He is the last to join the quartet and has been suffering from "writer's block."

"This place is brimming with significance! Thats the problem with this whole damn road."
"Problem?"
"Metaphor, man. Your walking out all alone, and suddenly in the middle of nowhere,
you see a dogfight near a cheese farm. What does that dogfight mean? And despite its literalness, the idea of a pilgrims journey on this road is a metaphor bonanza. Friends, the road itself is amongst our oldest tropes. The high road and the low, the long and winding, the lonesome, the royal, the open road and the private. You have the road to hell, the Tobacco Road, the crooked, the straight and the narrow. There's the road stretching into infinity, bordered with lacy mists favored by senitmental poets. There's the more dignified road of Mr. Frost, and for Yanks, every four years, there's the road to the White House. Then you have the road which most concerns me today, the wrong road, which I fear I must surely have taken."

Junkyard Quote 3, Week 8

At the 1976 Montreux Jazz Festival, Nina Simone, who Janis admired greatly, commented on Joplin:

You know I made thirty-five albums, they bootlegged seventy. Oh, everybody took a chunk of me. And yesterday I went to see Janis Joplin's film here. And what distressed me the most, and I started to write a song about it, but I decided you weren't worthy. Because I figured that most of you are here for the festival. Anyway the point is it pained me to see how hard she worked. Because she got hooked into a thing, and it wasn't on drugs. She got hooked into a feeling and she played to corpses

Junkyard Quote 2, Week 8

"I ache for the beat of a drum and not just the pitter patter of a dull lifeless cavity."

A random line I scribbled on one my scratch papers.

Classmate Response 1, Week 8

In response to http://taylorboltz.blogspot.com/2012/03/calisthenics-entry-1-week-8.html

Cupcake Memory Wars

Flipping through the 500 plus channels
the screen stops on the Food Network,
where a panel of pastry judges gorge on twelve cupcakes.
Not red velvet or chocolate chip, but rather
pistachio with lemon meringue or devils food with rum and citrus.

I ponder the excitement felt by those three,
tasting the different combinations, the different themes wrapped
in tinfoil cups topped with witch hats and flying fondent monkeys.
But then I wonder about the two finalists and the depression
the sink into, like butter into batter,
the fact that they can't revel in the glorious melting or bitter crumbling
of these Cupcake Wars.

I remember the days where my mother and I
would sit and bake and watch these whisking battles.
Who can create the tastiest mini cake while also
keeping in mind the theme of the day. I ache to remember more,
to taste less dark chocolate of now
and more raspberry filling of before-
my cupcake memories burnt and washed out.



My response:
My daughter and I love to watch cupcake wars together, but I always hate the end where they make the two finalists hustle to build these diplays with 1000 cupcakes in 2 hours - they always look sloppy! Soo...anyway.... I think the subject of cupcake wars is very interesting, especially in the context of reversal becaseu you are literally dealing with "sweet" subject matter!  In the beginning, I love the line "Not red velvet or chocolate chip, but rather pistachio with lemon meringue or devils food with rum and citrus." You nailed it here with specificity. I want one of both, please. :) Another powerful line is "the different themes wrapped in tinfoil cups topped with witch hats and flying fondent monkeys." Again, very specific, and the language is fun, having the thmes wrapped up in tinfoil cups verus the cupcakes. I will echo what Drika says as well, the "butter into batter" is very visual and another powerful line that stands on its own. The part that confuses me a litle is "the fact that they can't revel in the glorious melting or bitter crumbling of these Cupcake Wars." This can use more explanation...why can't they revel? Im not sure the idea is developed here fully and I think you can tweak it to have more impact and/or clearer meaning. And at the very end i like the line "I ache to remember more, to taste less dark chocolate of now and more raspberry filling of before" but again I get a little lost. Why is this memory turing sour? Did something happen between the mother and daughter? I can sense that something has gone awry but I have no idea why the speaker is so sad. Overall though, some very strong writing and imagery. Be more direct with your intentions in the end and this would be a great piece...imo

Junkyard Quote 1, Week 8

To wear your heart on your sleeve isn't a very good plan; you should wear it inside, where it functions best.
Margaret Thatcher
Read more: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/m/margaret_thatcher_3.html#ixzz1ogKLREwk

Reading Response, Week 8

Bigfoot Stole My Wife

I love short opening lines that catch your attention. When you write that becomes a fundamental - teachers will tell you, even in scholarly writing, to always start with an "attention grabbing" sentence. "The problem is credibility" does that for me. it peeks my curiosity. And then to keep going with it , to continue and repeat the theme in the second sentence leaves my mouth watering. I am also drawn by the theme. In the very first paragraph I can't help but thinking of the time when I asked my mother if I told her, promised her, that Aliens visited me and no one else believed me, would she? Of course she said yes.
The way the second paragraph starts is where I start to have that tingly feeling - when subjects tell you that they've basically been paranoid for two years you start to get the feeling that you are in the midst of something strange going on. I love the way he admits to being too caught up in gambling to see the problem, but decides to remain completely oblivious to what the problem is! I gad to snicker at the signs of intrusion and the smell. I love how disconnected he is. I want to lie him, but he's a total shmuck. And then he defends himself by calling the world a bunch of cynics. Then, when we get to the story about the trailer being washed away I get that aha moment because he talks about something real happening that seems unlikely, like the "impossible possible" scenarios I pondered as a child and immediately thought of when starting to read this story. It's like the author read my mind. I like how, in the ending, the subject is telling us to believe. Believe in everything. Do not question, be blind in the faith of all words. he has to, because if not he will have to face reality - something he has been running from all his life.  

Improv, Week 8

I'm sure if I look hard enough this is improving something... work with me here. :)

"Don't read in the dark, it'll ruin your eyes" my mom always said in passing. I don't think she really gave a shit about my eyes since she never bothered to turn on a light. I think she said it out of some visceral motherly instinct to be bothered by whatever her mother was bothered by, because that would make her a good parent. That, and she was convinced that I was lying on the eye chart tests in school because she thought I wanted glasses and was purposely trying to destroy my eyesight. Which I was. Silly of me, though, because genetics would kick in just fine. I assumed it was genetics. My mother had great eyesight, stemming from captivating olive green and brown flecked eyes. She also had a loud infectious laugh, and a smile that could - and did - enchant most people she beamed it at. People would later tell me that I had her smile and her laugh...but I didn't have her eyes. My brother and sister did, but not me. I thought green eyes were supposed to be recessive. After third grade, when we learned about genetic possibilities through charts and graphs, exes and ohs, I was convinced my mother's genes were stronger than any man's because her green genes kicked the ass of my stepfathers black holes. I never met my father but I assumed many things. One: he must have terrible eyes. I would wonder if he had the same eyes as me, calm-sea eyes, boring and flat. Somewhere between gray and blue. I would stare into the mirror and will my eyes to sparkle, but they never did.


...just the start. Any input before I keep going? 

Free Entry, Week 8

                                                                    A Trip to Grandma's

She has mini-steps leading to the front door, granny. Little brick steps for her steps. Pulling the screen door that creaks white with old age, the hydraulic door closer shushes me as I enter, like a finger wagging a cautionary tale over my head. The door clasps shut, tight, with a click. It smells like pantry boxes of expired mac n' cheese, old clothes and plastic medicine bottles. The carpet in the living room is an old sea-foam green and white doilies abound. The couch has a Victorian pattern of overly-red roses and I remember how big the couch used to be when I was little. Now the roses seem bigger than the memories. Tchotchkes crowd the room, keeping granny company. Fake finches and painted styrofoam eggs nest the house as I search for their mother. On my way down the hall I pass "The Cat Room," appropriately titled as such by granny herself. Pictures of cats are everywhere; blanketing everything from the dresser to the bedding. She loves these animals dearly, but doesn't keep any of her own. Probably because she is getting too old. She had trouble stepping off her big-little steps last month and now she has to use a walker and go to physical therapy. Her spine is compressed and her medications numerous, but she still manages to go to work at the local library - the one with the dressed up ceramic pig in a flowery white hat that greets you at the door. Dear sweet granny, the life-long librarian. Fat and short, like a weeble-wobble. You know, those plastic toys that are weighted and rounded at the bottom? You can push them with your finger, but they don't fall down. They almost topple but then spring back to life in an instant of motivation, or instinct. I'm not sure which. Maybe both. As I enter her room, I see a lifetime of accumulation. Pictures of my mom when she was young. Pictures of my aunt and her first husband...and my aunt and her second husband. She's shoving cake into his mouth. Everything is brass. The bed frame, the picture frames, the clock on the wall. Cheap brass, sea-foam green carpet and a boxy television - so old it still has knobs on it. I look to the bed and see a book flipped carefully over, holding an important place open for granny to return to. It has a picture of a young lady on the front, all stuffy-dress and made of tea. She sits on a sofa that bears a rosy resemblance to the one in the living room. Out of boredom I grab the book, curious to see what sweet old ladies read. "...he takes her from behind, his member entering her forcefully as she bites down on his wrist." Eyes twitching, I place the book down exactly as I found it and escape back to the fake finches, who, with their beady black eyes will bear into my soul and know that I know.

I don't think I'll sit on that couch ever again.               

Classmate Response 2, Week 7

Improv/Imitation Entry 1 (Week 7)

This is an improv off the concept that Katie Chaple used, the concept of taking something in the news and using it as a triggering subject: I read an article today about some sort of video taken by an iPhone of the Mayan pyramid which showed a light beam coming from the top.

End of Days

A photo taken in seconds.
The quick click click captures
our end of days.
The stream of light emblazoned
in the memory of the iPhone 4.
Can the mesmerizing glitch symbolize our doom?

Now, photoshop dissects,
studies each pixel and the saturation sensor
wondering if their never failing software failed.
Meanwhile, the human race paces,
on the edge of their pyramids,
waiting to tumble off the edge
and watch ruins emerge from the lightbeams of Heaven.



Response:
What a cool piece!
"A photo taken in seconds" - how many things happen quickly, without serious thought, that nowadays becomes viral or vitally important. I like the "emblazoned light memorializing the iPhone 4." This part makes me feel like there could be something happening here with serious undertones but it all seems a little silly when your proof comes in the form of an iPhone.

Then you have people studying these images like Jesus burns on toast, trying to use math and statistics to determine reality - when the reality they should be focusing on goes unattended.

My favorite line is "Meanwhile the human race paces,/on the edge of their pyramids,/waiting to tumble off the edge/and watch ruins emerge from the lightbeams of Heaven."

For some reason this reminds me of the Meat Puppets song Plateau...

Improv 1, Week 7

This is just the beginning. I had read this article on Struck it Lucky (who is still very much alive) in my husband's ESPN magazine and I wanted to do something with it. I've been carting this damn article around for weeks, trying to make something happen. I was moved by David Bottom's poem "A Heron ont he Oconee" and although this is a loose improv, I liked the idea of decay, remembrence, and breaking a poem into parts. Chaple must have got it from him too, as she does it quite a bit in her book. Anyway, here goes:

Part 1.

A flag snaps in the breeze,  

the maiden horse clad in navy blue Struck it Lucky.

The crowd, white and moneyed, wears Brooks Brothers and Lilly Pulitzer.

Part II.

Injected with Lasix to control internal bleeding, front legs wrapped

In neoprene ice packs, stuffed cotton balls in ears.

 899 days of existence amount to mud fever and grass sickness.

 swelling, spraining, tearing, breaking.

Part III.

Still, Stall 31 is exactly the same. A 14 x 14 room of cinderblock and wood

A layer of straw on the floor, fresh water in a bucket

A bale of hay dangling outside its door. Struck It Lucky 

Nevermore.   

random

What the hell is with all this hipster self-titling? Anyone who calls himself a hipster is obviously anything but...

annoying!!

Free Entry, Week 7

Pyramids

playing with shapes and patterns
like Euclid and his elements. Like Confucius,
who sees tradition in all things diamond-shaped and formed
like pentagons, squares and isosceles triangles held together
by religious glue and right angles. There is order and chaos
the battle over form and formlessness never concludes
mantras form clusters of stars that rise and swirl
like marble fudge batter
unbounded by a common recipie, hands broken free,
hitting the tongue like a gulp of sand.

Classmate Response 1, Week 7

Calisthenics, Wk7

In class on Thursday we did an assignment were a student was asked a bunch of random questions about her childhood in Chicago and we as a class took down notes on her answers, some were simple and some of her answers were completely out there. From there we had to write a short draft with her answers and this is mine:

The pegs are all knit into the rug as she tries to make another star-like pattern. The close space between the glowing pegs remind her of the short distance between her ghost town and the Wasco candy store, a yellow and not yet ripe orange color warming her hands. From behind she can feel the cat's sly eyes goring into her human frame. As she silently wishes for the cat to die by the cold tangled silver coils of a slinkey, she sister plunges a royal blue peg up into the unknown space of her nose.

Reading Response 1, Week 7

A Heron on the Oconee

                                        1
Now on the Oconee, on this shallow elbow of quiet water,
the first moist sunlight seeps through the thicket,
and a heron streaked in feathered lightstrides out among the rocks.
Ruffled and muddy, it wobbles out into the river
and balances on sticks among the rocks,
 utterly motionless among the rocks.

                                       2
Near the end, the way my old man stared into the distance,
the way he leaned from his armchair
toward a window, elbow quivering on his walker,
and gazed through oak beanches into a broken sky,
is the way this heron, ruffled, muddy,
stares downriver at the water rippling into the trees.

-David Bottoms, from We Almost Disappear

I like how this poem is purposely split into sections. This is surprising because it is a calculated move that I would think would take some of the intrigue out of "figuring out" the poem. I had to stop and think about what a "shallow elbow of quiet water" looks like, and it reminded me of the time not too long ago where I watched a heron walk out of the woods into the shallow water behind my grandparent's backyard in Kentucky. Yes, I know this has no place in a critique, but it made me pick up the phone and call my grandparents. And language that calls you to action is a powerful thing. The first part, recalling the independant and strong heron and then later comparing the elbow of the water with the shaky elbows of his father was magestically tragic. I wonder if he had Alzheimers becasue of the last line, where this heron "stares downriver at the water rippling into the trees." Both images are serene, strong and silent...but for completely different reasons.       

Calisthenics 1, Week 7

From Taylor's interrogation

One half-hour outside retiree town, between not-yet-ripe orange lizards and tangled slinkies
The Lady Across the Street sells cereal and candy from behind the dusty counter of the corner store.
She squints and tries to bring the light-bright dreams of her youth back to life, like she did for that kitten just that one time -
holding a tangerine to the sky she imagines herself there, on a unknown planet. Planet Elgin,
where 9 year olds kids run the Dairy Queen and old ladies with pukish yellow skin play football.

Junkyard Quote 1-4, Week 7

"Eight piggies in a row, Oh
Eight piggies in a row. Could they laugh? no no!
Could they cry? no no!
There were eight piggies in a row..."
- this is a song from one of Raffi's children's CDs that freaks me out.

"But you didn't have to cut me off
Make out like it never happened
And that we were nothing
And I don't even need your love
But you treat me like a stranger
And that feels so rough
You didn't have to stoop so low
Have your friends collect your records
And then change your number
I guess that I don't need that though
Now you're just somebody that I used to know"
-Gotye, Somebody that I used to know

"A fish hawk fell from a dead tree and thrashed the river,
clawing up another trout. I thought, sure,

to have tumbled so far
and finally to have reached a beginning."

 -David Bottoms, Montana Wedding Day


"Turtles really have long legs,
But they don't stretch 'em out
Until its very late at night,
And then they run about,
Racin' over hill and field,
Until mornin' comes - and then
They curl 'em back inside their shells
And crawl around again."
-Shel Silverstein, The Truth About Turtles