Poetry of Abby E. Murray

DEPLOYMENT - DAY ONE

2012-02-05T14:08:00.002-07:00

I seriously can't believe my last blog post was in July, 2011. Where have I been??

Keeping busy, I suppose. I'm still teaching at the community college, still living in Colorado Springs. And, for the second time since I've lived in this town, I'm saying goodbye to my husband so he can fight in a war I have never considered honorable or justified.

We spent the past few weeks prepping pounds of paperwork and setting up our own personal support networks. Most of you know I'm not a huge fan of the "army wife" social scene; I keep to myself or I'm glued to my phone so I can talk to my family in Washington state or my friends in Georgia or Texas or Oregon. That condition of never feeling quite at home follows me to every city I live in, but I remember feeling that way before I married Tom. As a teenager, I used to glamorize the idea of living in a new place every year, of never settling down. I was going to be an actress and live in New York at least once. As soon as I started studying literature, acting went out the window but my wanderlust just concealed itself in a quieter, less obnoxious costume. I started feeling the pangs of homesickness, the lack of familiarity, and the drawbacks of constant relocation. I became comfortable in Eagle River, Anchorage, Vancouver, Atlanta, Columbus - as soon as we packed up to leave. I left hard-earned friends, jobs, and writing groups behind to find myself in a new place with my books and pets to comfort me before Tom's next deployment began.

This morning, at 2am, Tom left for a month of training before his third tour in a combat zone. He'll return for a short break in March, then I'll see him again by Christmas, hopefully. This tour will be, I think, his most challenging.

We remain very different people who have created the only kind of successful marriage I can imagine. Tom's job is important to me only in that it makes him feel happy, needed, confident, and self-aware. Tom is, by himself, a role model and my closest confidant. My job and my writing have a tendency to become (sometimes not-so-fortunately) my identity while he is gone. I overschedule myself and doubt my own work as I practice much too late at night. I back into a safe routine of loneliness and quiet chaos. I clean. I read. I run. I go weeks without being touched or touching others. I sometimes wonder if I'd be in the same profession if I had a husband who was around more, at home for dinner every night and never shot at - my poetry, my second chapbook in fact, is grown from my experience as a sort of pacifist married to a soldier. What would I write about?

I wrote this earlier this morning, and I'm posting it here because I don't have any intention of sending it out to journals. I can't see it successfully reaching beyond my close friends and colleagues and family and acquaintances. I've been working hard with my poetry students this semester on writing what is not created for publication but for exploration of the craft, what is experimental and part of understanding the text we read, what plays with personal experience and the capacity of the imagination.

I've missed you guys. You're such good listeners. : )

DEPLOYMENT: DAY 1

Skip mass.

Start laundry.

Find the six words he wrote

on a yellow post-it:

I love you, See you soon.

Tape it to the kitchen wallpaper.

In each room

locate his most visible

belongings,

the blue mountain company hat,

green plaid jacket,

a stray flathead screwdriver

and his keys to your car

on the dining room table.

His sewing kit,

a maroon fleece patted with dog hair

and a pair of heavy gloves

on the sofa,

coins on top of the TV,

a fog-colored waterbottle

with his battalion logo scratched off,

the Swiss Army knife

he got from a real Swiss officer,

the expensive and flavorless chapstick,

uniform receipts

crumpled between the toaster

and a bunch of green bananas.

Pour out the rest of his coffee creamer,

put the half-eaten ham sandwich

and his Chinese leftovers

down the garbage disposal in pieces.

Switch the laundry.

Two issues of Popular Mechanics behind the toilet

and three different books about the same war

on the windowsill

of the guest bathroom.

Take down both your towels

at the same time to wash.

Blast his toothbrush with your hair dryer

before sealing it in a plastic bag

with his razor and shaving cream

under the sink, away from dust.

The mug with two sips of tea left

on his nightstand,

an empty water glass.

Move your own stack of books

to his nightstand,

put your pillow on his side of the bed

and his on yours.

Dishes in the dishwasher.

Towels in the hamper.

Place everything small enough to fit

inside the wooden box

with his name carved into it.

Its lid should close completely.

Hang his jackets in the back

of the coat closet upstairs,

return the screwdriver to its hook

on the garage wall.

Switch the laundry.

Fold.

Answer one pressing email,

replace the pen by the phone,

slip his books back into

his bookcase, the only unalphabetized one

in the house.

Use up the rest of the all-purpose cleaner

on doorknobs, countertops,

the garbage can lid, refrigerator handle,

stovetop, sinks, the wine cart.

Rinse the bottle and recycle.

Sweep and vacuum around the dog.

Write.

From your desk,

staring straight ahead,

notice the beer bottle

that’s rolled underneath the armchair

in the living room.

Imagine yourself

pushing back from your desk,

standing and walking

from one room to the other

in his slippers,

lifting the couch and setting it

on a temporary angle

while you retrieve the bottle,

two nickels and a penny.

Write.

STRENGTHS & WEAKNESSES

2011-07-22T14:35:00.001-06:00

Isn't it funny how all writers have strengths and weaknesses within their own craft? I spent this week teaching my poetry class about surrealism, using both visual (Magritte) and literary (Breton) art to explain my explanations. Funny, because some of the poems I loathe more than any other pieces of literature are explorations in surrealism-- they can so quickly become obscure for the sake of obscurity. In a way, psychoanalysis and the Jungian theory of our unconscious using familiar images and symbols to communicate deeper meaning from the shadowed parts of our minds is... annoying. Just tell me what I need to know. I don't want to connect the dots; I want to see the resulting shape.

It's been a struggle, I think, for my class to go outside what is real and in front of them. I wouldn't necessarily call that a weakness. But it's a struggle worth going through, certainly. In my poems, I enjoy staying outside of what is real. I venture inside realism every now and then, unfortunately, to write war poems and what I call "lady poems" that scratch the surface of how fascinating gender really is. But in the end, realism isn't where I get my high. Letter-writing goldfish, rats gone sailing in umbrellas, and women who grow gills are more stimulating; I write a good poem with one small surrealist twist and I'm on cloud 9 for, oh, I dunno, 48 hours.

Teaching the class has made me realize that my students and I share an opposite, and similar, struggle. I suffer from not feeling comfortable inside what is real. My writing has become, to me, the most beat-up pair of jeans you've ever seen: worn at the knees, wallet print on the back pocket, burn holes, scratches, busted zipper, ripped hems, and about three thousand pockets, each holding something worthless.

At first, that sounds romantic-- limited to the imagination. But, these days, I see it as unproductive and fearful. Poetry that tells a reader what is happening in front of them is powerful. Poetry that is real is powerful. Poetry that gives you the object without making you follow clues is powerful. And sure, I acknowledge the argument for imaginative / fantastic / surreal poetry leading us to new thought as well. I just wish I could write everything. And well. Poets who can grab true grief (or love, or passion, or oppression) by the neck and wrestle it onto the page astonish me.

If anything, I can spend this semester learning from my students, rooted in their personal experiences and unafraid of exploring it with language. I can gulp the fresh air that comes with forcing them outside their comfort zones too. Maybe I'll write what's real when I'm older and I'm more familiar with what it really is.

Right?

Here's a prose poem from today's scratch work:

READING JANE AUSTEN WITH MY YOUNGER SISTER

We put our books down and rifle through the game drawer. Sorry is missing the red and blue men, Monopoly is ridiculous. Let’s play marbles, my younger sister says. Inside the leather pouch is a stick of chalk probably fifty years old, yellow-white, and a lot of pearls, bluish-white. They skitter out of the bag like mice. My sister picks one up to shoot. Maybe we shouldn’t, I say, These are pearls, not marbles. What do you mean, she asks, positioning herself lower to the ground, on her belly, a sniper on the slope of a ditch. They’re pearls, I say. I grab some from the undrawn ring. You’re cheating, she says. What if they were Mom’s? I say, hoping she won’t shoot. These are marbles, she says, They’re glass, They weren’t Mom’s. I snatch the pearl she’s about to shoot with and smash it with Jane Austen’s anthology. There is a sound of breaking teeth. I lift the book slowly and both of us, on all fours, stare at the powdered white. It’s glittering because it was glass, my sister says. I say, it’s glittering because it was worth so much.

MOBILE LEARNING ENVIRONMENT

2011-06-07T19:36:00.003-06:00

Tom and I have done a lot of traveling in the last month. We flew to Indiana to visit my mom and her husband in Indianapolis (a city that's sort of surprisingly fun), Pennsylvania - Dutch country - to visit Tom's extended family, and in the past two weeks we've hosted my sister and niece from Washington then my in-laws from Alaska. The in-laws leave tomorrow, and we'll finally have a house that might be kind of almost quiet.

(a peony in downtown Indianapolis)

Today, we divided most of our time between the car, driving to Great Sand Dunes National Park, and walking outside, playing in the Arkansas River on the way home, throwing Flynn's ball, and strolling through Salida. It's 9:39pm now, and I've been ready to crawl into bed for the past three hours-- at least.

(Tom, me, and our bully of a dog, Flynn, at Great Sand Dunes NP)

However, I noticed that my blog has been neglected as of late. So, here's a poem I wrote today. Hope you read it, enjoy it, and tell me you enjoyed it. In the morning.

MOBILE LEARNING ENVIRONMENT

You said hey

I wonder if ants

dream about

Jacob’s Ladder

not the one

from the bible

but the flower

they’re so beautiful

the flowers

not ants

and I said

get a load of this

pickup going 90

with a Jetta chained

to the hitch

and is that a go-kart

on the Jetta’s roof

That sounds like

the start of

a really bad joke

you said

Ants probably dream

about the bible

as much as we do

I said

A pickup,

a Jetta

and a go-kart

walk into a bar

you said

...

NAPOWRIMO DAY 7 POEM

2011-04-08T12:20:00.003-06:00

On Wednesday, Tom came home after his morning PT session and we made breakfast before I left for work. As we sat at our dining room table, Tom suddenly slapped the front page of the newspaper in front of me, blocking my view of peanut butter toast with a fantastic article. "Abby. You HAVE to read this," he said.

And I did read it. And I cut it out and kept it too.

Here's a picture of Luna, the jumping cow. Her owners, a family in Germany, were unable to give their daughter (Regina Mayer) a horse, so Regina decided to go riding on one of their cows... and she taught Luna how to jump.

(photo from Spiegel Online)

I admired what this article captured so much, it influenced my poem for Day #7 of NaPoWriMo. Of course, this wasn't all that influenced it... I started to notice how often I have heard of the surreal or unthinkable taking place, and it's usually happening in modern Germany. Just a couple Christmases ago, Tom and I were staying up late in a friend's living room in Morlaix, France, watching a TV special about how a German man claimed to be able to tell people's fortunes by placing his hands on their naked butts. You've heard of palm-readers? Germany goes one step further by producing a butt-reader. (Our French friends shook their heads and laughed that night, muttering "Only the Germans.")

It all made me wonder whether modern-day Germany was sneaking into the rest of the world's wildest dreams at night, then managing to make a profit off of our off-the-wall thoughts. Why don't we wake up and try out the weird ideas ourselves? It's a valid suggestion... and I have ALWAYS wanted to ride a cow.

SO MANY TIMES I HAVE DREAMED

Napowrimo day #7

So many times

I have dreamed

of accomplishing

the extravagant.

Bouncing on

a small green

saddle atop

the knobby spine

of a dairy cow,

while bystanders

with faces like

flashbulbs look on.

So many times

I have dreamed

of jumping

on my steed

over painted logs

and beer crates,

of landing

on a bed of

newspapers.

So many times

I dream of sailing

through bluish

pastures frosted

with dew

only to wake

and hear it has

all been done,

just last week,

in the German

countryside.

...

HAPPY NAPOWRIMO!

2011-04-04T15:48:00.004-06:00

Welcome to National Poetry Month, a time when all the closet-poets around you suddenly make their presence known by writing one poem per day for thirty days, complete with fanatic revisits to old author-favorites, nervous breakdowns at 11:53pm when a poem still hasn't emerged, the joyous discoveries of new poets and their publications, and a frenzied sort of appreciation for poetry as a craft. Our eyes may be bloodshot and we're speaking in tongues (Ah! Dactylic hexameter!) but we're totally safe, I promise.

I started this period of designated writing time after a month that left me feeling as if I'd endured enough stress to keep my list of creative prompts flowing. Tom came home from Iraq. We've begun this dance (for a second time) that involves complicated steps around living with a partner after living alone for a year, the twirling of occasional mood swings and the quick rushes of celebration.

Then there's been the little things, mostly around the house, that have kept me ridiculously busy. Spring Break was filled with papers to be graded. Flynn ate one arm of the couch (literally. She ATE. IT.) which kept Tom up for one night, sewing for my sanity. A panel of our backyard fence blew over in a windstorm. Stuff like that.

I've more or less been caught in a dry spell when it comes to writing, surprisingly. As I've scrubbed or repaired or graded or driven up and down I-25, I've had imaginary glimpses of a familiar book cover on my reading shelf: Woolf's A Room of One's Own. I can't help wondering if I'd really be able to come up with anything to write if I had guaranteed peace and quiet-- or whether I'd be bored out of my mind without the distractions to write about.

But right now, I'm sitting at my dining room table, and if I lean to the left to see around the vase of half-wilted roses and daisies (they still smell good) I can see my neighbor, Tim, lying on his back in his front yard, tossing a tennis ball up in the air for Louie, his Boston Terrier (Flynn's nemesis). Tim's an older guy, and he's been out raking for the past couple hours as I've worked on class stuff and cleaned up the house. One minute he's filling a garbage can with yard debris from the last windstorm; the next minute he's on his back, side to side with Louie, both of them exhausted from play.

And there might be nothing poetic about it. And I'm learning to get okay with that. I've noticed I've opted out of living in the moment several times before in order to observe the facts, the imagery, the details of a situation. I haven't developed the talent (yet) for multi-tasking in that way-- observing and living, simultaneously. So for now I'm observing.

Tonight, just before I go to bed, I'll check my memory for anything that stuck, and I'll write a poem that stands just as much a chance of being trash as it does for being submitted to a journal. I'll read some William Carlos Williams to console myself in my lack of words. I'll read some Ron Padgett to laugh at myself. And I'll go to bed tired.

SILVER

Napowrimo day #1

I like the color silver

but tonight

it is a boat too small

to carry my thoughts

and myself together,

a shallow dish

placed on the lip

of a river.

It trembles in the current

as it balances

a load of moonlight,

some cigarette ash,

a letter written in pencil.

...

THIS GUY’S WIFE

Napowrimo day #2

I could never tire of looking

at this guy’s wife,

this guy big as a house

and his wife

like a Porsche parked in front

of him,

he says honey I can’t open

this damn beer

so she says give it here

and the beer is passed

between the two,

catching the bronze afternoon light

which flashes like a candle

blown out

in an upstairs window

across the street.

...

THE IRONY IS NOT LOST ON ME

Napowrimo day #3

The flower shop three blocks from home

sells orchids and cacti and ladyslippers

but won’t be open long on account of its inventory,

solitary blooms looming over sculpted pots,

ogling clientele with orange and yellow eyes.

They pull away from their painted green stakes.

But we can walk there from here

so we do, and we each pick out a cactus.

I say I need something hardy. You say

you want something easy on the eyes.

Cacti are difficult to kill, easy to ignore,

and some of them have dusty pink petals

that burst from the tips of pale tendrils

to touch their neighbors lightly, blind.

You pick the kind that flowers,

I choose a squat, silvery one with spines arranged

on half-moon leaves like teeth. Walking home,

I say our family is growing. You say

my cactus looks impatient.

...

MONTH OF LOVE & STUFF

2011-02-24T16:09:00.004-07:00

I wanted to post a new poem this month, something from scratch that might be worth revising, but to be honest, I've written some decently depressing stuff this month. Nothing seems to match the tone of February, of Valentines Day, of spring's first hints, of a month that is no longer steeped in the craziness of winter holidays but isn't quite as warm as we'd like it to be either.

So I think I'll post an older poem. This is one of my very few love poems, and it was originally published in Tiger's Eye (2008, Issue 16) before being printed in my chapbook, Me and Coyote (Lost Horse Press). I tried to think about love from what I considered a very objective point of view-- contemplating the way it is never what I seem to think it is. While I wrote "How I Love You," I thought about how love is too tricky to define... which kind of sucks, because I enjoy definitions. I like answers. But maybe love has too many definitions, too many answers. That's good, right?

For example, my relationship with Tom has always, in a pleasant way, surprised me. Not only did I not intend to get married while I was an undergraduate, I certainly didn't intend to marry someone in the military. But I feel as if I'm never finished talking to him, never quite done being around him. He's so intelligent and hilarious that I decided it might be worth it to put up with the military-- not embrace it, no, but develop some tolerance and take the good with the... less than ideal. My love for him is, I guess, based on opposites, based on not-knowing.

It's occurred to me that someone might read this post and interpret it in a way that I didn't intend, and that brings me back to the format of the poem. I can never point out a couple and define their love. (Well, I can, but it'd be wrong, so chances are it'd be funny too, and I'd only end up telling Amy while we're on the bus to hell.) Love has too many dimensions.

Maybe that's why I don't write about it much.

HOW I LOVE YOU

strange as a jack in the pulpit opening her brown velvet eye into the ground

resilient as veins of ivy pointing with countless arrows to their hearts

distracted as a passionflower letting her vines do the dancing

kinky as three vanilla beans soaking in a bottle of vodka

ragged as the dishtowel hanging from your oven door

simple as a brown moth translucent on the window

silent as a silver key sleeping in a painted lock

naïve as paper flowers tied to a palm tree

persuasive as a brick of chocolate

faultless as a marble Madonna

pious as a sprig of lavender

constructive as a cricket

I love you more than

an iron fence

loves her

house

...

a couple updates...

2011-02-15T20:39:00.003-07:00

Hey! So, I'm going to post my monthly poem for February... eventually. For right now, I just want to broadcast some updates.

First, I have a personal narrative being published (I know! I wrote prose! Weird!) tomorrow on the Cheek Teeth blog, the online extension of the literary journal Trachodon. It was fun to write, but I have to admit, it's a little more soul-bearing than I'm used to. I now understand how daunting creative nonfiction can be, if I wasn't intimidated by it before. Honesty is something I've become accustomed to making a reader search for in terms of poetry. It's part of the fun. But to just... lay it all out on the line like that? Just write what you think? Flat out? Yikes. Creative nonfictioners, you have my admiration. Well, you do if you read my narrative. Do it!

Second, my monthly reading series is having it's February event this Friday, the 18th, at Black Cat Books in Manitou, for all those who live in the area. This month's guest author is Juan Morales, poet and Director of the Creative Writing Program at CSU-Pueblo. Check out the Colorado Springs Writers Reading Series blog and come say hello after the reading.

Third (and this isn't writing-related but still a significant event), Tom will be returning from his year-long deployment in just a couple weeks! Yay!

Have a great February, everyone. Thank you for listening!

...

AN "I BELIEVE" EXERCISE

2011-01-23T17:15:00.003-07:00

Two posts in one month? I suppose I'm not surprised. Spring semester doesn't start until tomorrow, and I literally have nothing left to clean in my house. I've scrubbed the kitchen and bathrooms, washed bedding, even shredded old documents piling up in the inbox. I've had my syllabi ready for a week now, and I know what I'm wearing for the first week of classes. Escaping myself sounds kinda good right now.

The good news is, I think I'm on the uphill climb out of my shitty-poems-only phase. I'm starting to come up with some that might be worth sending out after revision. Because I'm not as frustrated now, I'm starting to play with exercises more often, if only to kill time before class. (Someone please remind me how bored I was when I am swamped in essays and writing assignments.) (But do it in a not-snarky kind of way, because I'm half joking, and nobody likes a know-it-all.)

My friend Adrienne Christian just posted a blog in which she tries out an exercise from the book Poet's Companion by Dorianne Laux and Kim Addonizio-- a text I've used before in my introductory creative writing class. The exercise tells participants to write out six serious things they believe in, six silly things they believe in, etc. etc. I was attracted to the exercise because it didn't promise a tried and true "poem" at the end; its purpose is to kickstart multiple ideas at once. It's also one of those exercises that serves as a good opportunity for the writer to get to know herself, although, as always, there is room for fiction. :)

So here's my take on the exercise. Thanks, Adrienne!

WHAT I BELIEVE AND WHATNOT, ETCETERA

I believe in judging people based on how they respond to animals, even though I shouldn’t. I believe almost every woman falls in love with another woman at least once in her lifetime. I believe the military is untrustworthy. I believe in forgiveness, the psychological effects of color, and the power of a good orchestra.

I’m pretty sure there’s a devil, that he has helpers, that he has ongoing border disputes. I’m pretty sure love at first sight is an excuse for laziness. I’m pretty sure I’m barren, and that for every man who’s loved me, there are five others who wouldn’t know why. I’m pretty sure my father’s spirit will come home for Christmas.

I’m not sure about the old man at the grocery store who kissed me on the cheek. I’m not sure I’m as complex as I hoped I’d be. I’m not sure of writers who admire my work, nor am I sure of those who dismiss it. I’m not sure I’d survive my husband being killed in combat. I’m not sure about tangerines that have been in the refrigerator for a month and still look fresh.

I don’t think about my financial future enough. I don’t think I look good in most shades of red. I don’t think daffodils are in season long enough. I don’t think I’m entirely honest with people and I don’t think I ought to be. I don’t think I eat enough fiber. I don’t think I like foods that are high-fiber.

I don’t believe wearing nylons is worth the discomfort and maintenance. I don’t believe I’ve eaten more than three desserts I didn’t crave later. I don’t believe people are as kind as they think they are, myself included. I don’t believe in the retelling of that story where Iphigenia escapes. I don’t believe in pride, and I certainly don’t believe in rabbits that live inside of hats.

...

HAPPY NEW YEAR & IT'S ALL GOING TO BE OKAY, RIGHT?

2011-01-09T14:14:00.005-07:00

I think the goal of posting one poem/post a month is realistic for me this year, as I'm making a concerted effort to stop over-scheduling myself in writing, teaching, even reading. I am also working on not feeling bad about cutting back, which has actually become the true problem.

The stack of books beside my bed has grown to an almost comical level-- it's become more daunting and intimidating than welcoming and invigorating... sure, some nights, I really do want to read some Hesse, Heine, or Schlegel, auf deutsch (with translation dictionary tucked in beside me) aloud to the cats, followed by my best interpretation before reading the published translation. Some nights, though, I end up falling into bed with only as much mental capacity as is needed to read a comic book, or at least a few pages of one, and a heavy sense of guilt for not picking up anything German, anything designed to help me prep for that distant idea of a PhD in Literature, anything that makes me think hard enough that I have to get up and write about it before I forfeit the benefits.

I am only teaching three courses this spring at the community college, and I want to get back into volunteering, start showing up at the soup kitchen down the street on Sunday evenings. There's something in me, too, that keeps whispering about how badly I want to teach violin lessons again, how I'd love to pick up a beginning student or two but know the competition in my area is strong and I don't want to spend more time searching than planning or practicing. (Basically, if anyone YOU know in the Colorado Springs area knows a beginning student, point them in my royal direction.)

Also, I'm looking forward to the AWP conference in Washington DC this February... sort of. Some aspects of AWP throw me over the moon: the readings done by so many of my literary role models, the mountains of books I've never heard of and can't put down once I sample them at the book fair, catching up with friends from different writing programs, even getting out of the house, out of my routine for a little while.

My chapbook of war poems is growing slowly, rearranging itself, and I intend to spend more time revising it for contests and open submissions. I was actually getting ready to send it out to three different publishers when I flew off to Washington for my father's funeral, and with the holidays soon after that, it hasn't been until now that I've thought about picking it up again. Still plenty of time before the semester starts, right? I need to learn how to take part in projects without throwing myself in head over heels. Of course, I also have the Colorado Springs Writers Reading Series to coordinate, which I love doing, but, as I planned the December event not too long ago, amidst final grades, house maintenance, baking, bill paying, dog training, church involvement, gift giving, holiday parties, writing requirements, travel preparation and minor physical ailments, Tom so lovingly told me over the phone from Iraq (I'm pretty sure I heard him smacking his forehead), "Dammit, every time one problem gets fixed, you set up another one right behind it!"

So, this year needs to be all about condensing the nonsense, about saying no from time to time, about prioritizing and, oh yeah, beginning that whole process of learning to live with another person again when Tom comes home in March. I need to be kinder to myself every time I pick a rejection slip out of the mailbox, every time I chastise myself for not going one more mile at the gym, for not picking up the German literature at night and opting for a magazine instead. It's all going to be okay.

(Of course, my inner critic is saying right now, "Damn, you're off to a fine start, aren't you, when you need to tell yourself 'It's going to be okay!' only nine days into the year... good luck with this one, chump.")

(And my newly hired other inner critic is putting that older inner critic in a sleeper hold, telling him to "say something nice, asshole! Do it! Now!" until the mean one says, "Okay, I guess she can post a good poem once a month, maybe...")

On that note, here's a poem for January: a first draft of another poem exploring the implications of being a poet at all.

FIVE POETS ON AN ISLAND

A plane goes down in the middle

of the ocean, out where there are

islands yet to be sold or air-conditioned,

and on the plane there are five poets,

each of them surviving (as poets will do)

dog-paddling to the nearest shore

or darting through the waves like sailfish,

graceful even in death’s shadow.

The island is white with yellow palms,

pink beach crabs floating over kelp beds,

lime-green vines woven around all of it.

One poet starts weeping and says

the thing he will miss most is

turning doorknobs, opening doors,

he will miss moving through things;

the others decide silently he will die first.

Another, the oldest, says he will miss

his cigarettes, which did not survive

the crash, and he’ll miss his wife’s garden—

not his garden, you see, his wife’s,

because he was born an ambitious man—

and his wife tended such fragile flowers,

camellias and jasmine and fuschias.

The poet wringing out his shirt

in the shade of a rock cave says

they should definitely elect a leader,

he needs structure in order to work;

the lady poet says she decided

just when the plane dipped its nose

she would make the best leader,

should they all end up marooned.

The poet whose clothes were torn away

by the ocean says something in a language

no one understands so they shrug at him,

tell him with their hands to go make

a fire for their dinner, even though

each of them is burning up, even though

the animals crouched behind them

agreed years ago not to be hunted.

...

I AM MYSELF BUT NO ONE KNOWS

2010-12-12T23:36:00.005-07:00

I am determined to post something here, tonight, and hopefully sometime soon afterward, before December is over. November (and December, really) have been a rough couple of months. I don't want to sound pathetic, but I sort of am: my father died four weeks ago, and since then I've been flying between Washington and Colorado, or playing catch up with my classes as the semester winds down. I complain, knowing full well that my two sisters back home are bearing the burden of settling Dad's affairs.

I could already say so much about losing my father, but the words start to bob up and down on the page (and in my head), a sloshy muck of doubt, of misunderstanding, whenever I try to tackle my emotions in writing. If anything, this is one of those life experiences that has pushed my poetry writing even further away from myself, in a way I'm not sure I like. I'm swimming further and further away from that tendency to "deal with" my own emotions in my poems. Someone else experiencing grief in my poem? Fine. War? Mental illness? Loss? Sure, anyone's but mine. Granted, poems aren't meant to "deal with" the poet's feelings. However, I've seen so many students lately who do it unabashedly, who struggle and fail and succeed and crave putting themselves on the chopping block that is a poem. It's brave. In the end, there are so many female poets out there that do it so well, so honestly; maybe I'm okay with standing back in awe for now.

For what it's worth, I don't feel as if I'm hiding from my emotions in "real life". But in writing? You bet I'm hiding. It's more fun.

A few days ago, I sent out a text message to a couple different writers saying that I was going to go sit in a cafe and write for a while, and I'd love it if they joined me. It turned into a group of four creative writers, Rebekah Harden, Tim Christian, Michael Ferguson and myself, sitting for close to three hours in Old Colorado City with our pens and paper and laptops. I mentioned something to Tim about how so many people write themselves into their poetry hoping no one notices the lack of "leaping", hoping they won't have to put themselves in a completely new, scary, bizarre, perhaps unhealthy, surreal, funky, experimental-type pair of shoes. Tim said I should be myself in a poem, only with a mustache so no one would know it was me.

So I wrote this poem. And I'm in it, with a mustache, but these aren't really my parents. And I don't know how to iron pants.

Night, all! And here's to a peaceful Advent.

(poem temporarily hidden!)

...

PERHAPS I AM THE JUNKYARD DOG

2010-11-12T22:33:00.004-07:00

I can't believe I didn't notice that I'd gone nearly a month without posting a poem. Jeez. I've actually been surprisingly productive for this time of year-- buried in midterms and first drafts of final essays, and I'm still finding time to write my own stuff. More to come this month, hopefully!

(poem temporarily hidden!)

...

MY AWESOME INTRO-TO-LIT CLASS

2010-10-14T12:03:00.003-06:00

I really shouldn't be playing with poetry right now; I should be grading. Serious. The stack is off the chain, at least five inches high.

But I had to show everyone this great surrealism exercise my Intro to Lit class did on Tuesday. We were starting a poetry unit and discussing Andre Breton's "founding" of surrealism when I decided to try out an exercise from the text. In the last ten-ish minutes of class, each student wrote one line of verse on a page, folded over their line so the next student couldn't see it, then passed it on. I collected the sheet before we dispersed (we HAUL out of there at 9:45am, most of us caffeine-starved and desperate) and I typed up the results last night. Tom was in the other room watching Mythbusters and having a scotch. I really wanted to join him. But once that poem came together on my screen-- I didn't change the order at all, only small additions of punctuation-- I couldn't stop reading it. I was proud of this group working together. The musicality of the second section is lovely, and the last line of the first section makes you re-read the entire piece differently.

I'm failing to mention that this group has some awesome in-class discussions. They aren't afraid to ask questions, and even though some of them are new to poetry, each of them appears to enjoy it. So, when I presented them with a handout of their collaborative work, their first question, naturally, was "Where should we publish it?"

Enjoy!

Intro to Surrealism: A Collaborative Poem (Lit 115)

1.
I'm drowning in a sea of doubt,
(if nothing at all, don't let yourself fall)
the everlasting grip of a daughter's hug,
over, under, around and through the hoops we wander.
Red roses fall from above.
Walking along the crooked path
a man strode down the road.
Drift on the ocean,
and the leaves finally fall to the ground.
I love dogs the same.

2.
I woke up this morning hungry and thinking,
when the sun is setting for some it is rising for one.
How now, brown cow. How now, brown cow.
The sun shines brightly through the window
and the waterfalls cry from the mountains.
Yesterday I found a horse who didn't want to play.
Swiftly, take me away! Into the night!
Random thoughts and hampered iron dens atop the troughs of lending pens,
I'll be in outer space, but I got inner peace, to say the least.

...

AUTHORFEST OF THE ROCKIES

2010-10-02T21:17:00.005-06:00

A friend of mine was kind enough to give me a free ticket to this year's Authorfest of the Rockies, an annual conference hosted at the Cliff House in Manitou Springs. So, off I went, to break up my day of grading. I sat in on a craft talk held by Art Goodtimes and Rosemerry Trommer, and Rosemerry had several three minute prompts for the audience to do while we picked up the discussion on writing and discovery. I thought I'd share my poem from one of those prompts, mostly so I could tell you how fantastic Rosemerry is (and Art! though I didn't get to chat with him as much), how tuned in to discovery, intellect, theory, and spirituality she is (or, at least, that's my opinion after a forty-five minute discussion). And the Sanskrit she chanted at the beginning? She's even got a lovely voice. The whole package. Check out their stuff.

Anyway. The group was prompted by the first line of Cavafy's "Ithaca" (which reads "When you set out on your journey to Ithaca..."). Art and Rosemerry both the read the piece to us, lending it two contrasting personalities. Rosemerry's was artistically cautionary and full of awe (you better see all the beauty) and Art's was excited and almost shocked (dude! you've GOT to see all this beauty!).

We had three minutes to write, something I think I'll use in the future; by having such a small amount of time, your mind doesn't focus on its familiar, favorite obstacles. It gets to the point. Also, it lets you get more done, which means you can go home with a notebook full of possibilities. Go!

JOURNEY TO ITHACA: SOME EXTRA ADVICE

Men, do not bother packing extra clothes.

You will not wear even your traveling gear long,

nymphs line the path like lanterns

with no one to chase their gold shadows.

Women, wear all the clothes you own in layers.

Unfastening one button pulling one string

can mean the difference between drowning

and crossing the flood on the shoulders of a Cyclops.

...

BONE BIRDS, MUSCLE BIRDS

2010-09-30T14:01:00.003-06:00

So, as I write this, Tom is somewhere in the sky between Baghdad and Kuwait, starting his long journey home for a short two weeks of much-needed R&R. I plan on spending the bulk of that time lounging with him at the spa, wandering through Denver, celebrating his birthday, and catching up.

For now, I'm sitting across from a stack of papers and stories (about, oh, four inches high) waiting to be graded. If I'm going to take next week off, I've got hours and hours of tedious work ahead of me, much like Tom, who can only travel one mile at a time.

I started thinking about my Advanced Writing independent study student this semester, with whom I've been meeting each Wednesday morning at a coffee shop just seven blocks from my house (a perfect little morning walk). For two hours, we discuss her assigned readings from texts by Richard Hugo, Ursula LeGuin, Constance Hale, Jerome Stern, and the occasional Natalie Goldberg. I listen as she reads her writing assignments aloud, more often than not noticing areas to focus on before I do, and tolerating my chants of "again!" after each piece.

This week, we focused on the sound of words in both poetry and prose, but we mainly focused on Roethke's poetry-- a subject inspired by Richard Hugo's fourth chapter from Triggering Town called "Stray Thoughts on Roethke and Teaching." (When we move further from prose into poetry, I'm busting out the big, fun guns like Steven Dobyns and Robert Pinsky.) We studied three poems from a collection of Roethke's work and noted how each piece moved up and down the scales of vowels and consonants, according to mood, to produce dynamic tones and evocative emotional responses. (Seriously. Read these poems aloud: "Orchids", "Child on Top of a Greenhouse", and "Cuttings (later)". Tell me it isn't singing for people who can't sing.) We also discussed Hugo's (and Roethke's) philosophy on not focusing too hard on publication or making a poem what it might not be. I am a particular fan of adding one of Hugo's rules to every exercise: "The poem must be meaningless" (Triggering Town, 30). By concentrating on the words (and all the "little things") the bigger picture comes together naturally, somewhere in our periphery, where we might not notice it at all until the piece is as complete as we want it.

Finally, we ended our session with an exercise I came up with after reading Ursula LeGuin's short chapter from Searoad titled "Foam Women, Rain Women" (a piece I recently assigned to my Intro to Lit class for rhetorical analysis as a short story, which went over much better than I expected). I asked for two nouns. Then we put the word "women" after each of them. Then we wrote a poem or short scene using that line as a title. Ten minutes. Even though LeGuin's "Foam Women, Rain Women" is more about how water comes in as many forms as women seem to, I wanted to play with the limits of a good title, the words for what they are: just words. My student chose the nouns: "drum" and "kettle". And off we went to write our versions of "Drum Women, Kettle Women".

My student's poem was worth revising this week; my poem was crap. However, later on that day, I tried again. This time, I chose "bone" and "muscle" for my nouns, and I decided to push a little further away from LeGuin by using "birds" instead of "women". The format is still entirely hers. But, as I sit here avoiding my papers-to-be-graded, hoping Tom will make it to Germany and eventually the states safely, I realize I can barely collect my thoughts well enough to come up with an exercise, let alone a format of my own. I feel as if I've been rushing around these past few weeks, filling in the blanks, everywhere, and I'll continue to do so for the next two(ish) days.

Here she be. Thanks for reading!

BONE BIRDS, MUSCLE BIRDS

Bone birds are so white they’re colorless,

self-starved, ugly, limbs held together with ribbons

of skin like tape, they’ll crack your binoculars.

Sometimes there’s a dead one on the sidewalk,

run over, no blood trail. Bone birds just snap

like bubble wrap and they’re gone, icy beaks cracked

wide open, wings drawn up like sails.

Muscle birds live for the silvery bath water

beneath the laundry line outside and swell like sponges,

absorbing, sucking, voices sweetened by sugar water,

honey, crumbs from last night’s spongecake thrown out

then resurrected. Muscle birds are mostly blue or violet but

my dad’s dad saw a red one on Christmas once,

nestled into a pine tree and glowing like a lantern.

...

RAYMOND CARVER'S CROW

2010-09-21T22:27:00.005-06:00

I've taken to reading Raymond Carver's poems before I go to bed. It's wonderful.

Of course, I have to read twenty minutes' worth of comic books afterward so I don't have nightmares of being swallowed alive by a sea of sadness and depression and beer burps, but whatever. I have plenty of Calvin & Hobbes lying around.

(poem temporarily hidden!)

...

PERSEPHONE COMES CLEAN

2010-09-10T22:09:00.004-06:00

It is my professional opinion that I should stop spending so much time with good fruit. Because my table is literally covered in jars of jam, sweet and spiced with rum, sealed and ready for the holidays. Tom says I'm out of control. I probably am.

Of course, jam and other desserts are what I turn to when I'm procrastinating, and I currently have about sixty papers and short stories to grade. Yowza.

So, tonight, as I wait for the batch of blackberry-rum to finish boiling on the stove, I think about some fruit I haven't tackled yet. Which leads me to the pomegranate, which reminds me of the tale of Persephone and Hades, of Demeter, of how the seasons came about. Maybe I'll find a pomegranate tomorrow at the farmer's market. For now, I'm logging off with tonight's poem from my scratch notebook, plus a nice little picture I found online.

PERSEPHONE COMES CLEAN

I told him I hated

pomegranates

because I didn't

think he knew

who I was.

One bite

and the seeds

slide out

like fish eggs.

He said

he hated them

too, for real,

and from his

many pockets

he produced one,

small

and tame looking,

a swan heart,

tossed it

eyeball-height

toward me

and I reached

without thinking.

My mother says

I can dislike

something

all I want but

ripe fruit

must be eaten.

He leaned against

a charred pillar,

watching me.

I remember

my hands grew hot

as I chewed,

his red mouth

opening

over a seed

as it slipped

down my chin.

...

A NEW DECORUM

2010-09-05T21:58:00.006-06:00

A quiet day here, with little to report. I sewed a button on a shirt today (if you know me, you realize what a huge feat this is). Here's a poem and a photo from my camera for your Labor Day.

A NEW DECORUM

Surprise mortar attacks have left

makeshift trenches between tents

every day this week, and the Forward

Command Center burst into flame

this morning at 0200,

a shade of red you can’t describe.

In the past three days I have washed

every scrap of fabric in the house,

bleached the kitchen, cleaned the windows,

fixed the screen door, made three batches

of strawberry jam with rum, hammered

butter into croissant dough, jogged ten miles

and finished two Agatha Christie novels.

You sounded as if everything would be fine

until I told you about the yellow irises

I bought last minute at the store tonight,

twelve of them at their peak, reflecting gold

over the grey-flecked linoleum,

over their cellophane funnel

dotted with red markdown stickers

that read in handwritten letters take me!

...

I GO FORMAL

2010-08-28T13:31:00.004-06:00

I sat down to write last night just before bed, and I ended up with a pantoum, strangely enough. I always thought I hated this form just slightly less than the sestina. I hesitate to say that I've never written a formal poem, because I've tried several times (and I'm afraid my students will find out that I'm not a fan of the formals), but I've never come up with anything I felt was worth revision. I almost wrote a sonnet last summer. And I think I wrote a haiku a couple months ago, sort of, that went something like: I try to look coy. / Man sitting beside me asks, / are you feeling ill?

But I try not to put much stock into the poems I write whilst on the benching machines at the Y. Besides, it only reminded me that men don't flirt with me. I look ill when I think I look good. (Well, I also wear jean shorts and drive a Subaru-- complete with bumper sticker that says domestic shorthairs rule-- so they probably have other assumptions, but whatever. This is beside the point.)

My point is, I wrote a pantoum!

MAKING PEACH PRESERVES

The peaches are local but they aren’t ripe.

She stops me to ask what pearls are made of.

She thinks it’s oyster shit but I guess some kind of calcium

and keep slicing, orbiting the knife round the hard pits.

She stops me to ask what pearls are made of.

Grains of sand, maybe, trapped until they fester properly.

I keep slicing, orbiting the knife round the hard pits,

sawing into the red grooves beneath too-pale flesh.

Grains of sand, maybe, trapped until they fester properly,

but now she wonders why we string contagion round our necks.

Sawing into the red grooves beneath too-pale flesh

I have little patience for philosophy, the purpose of pearls,

but now she wonders why we string contagion round our necks.

Because we love what does not happen often enough, even infection.

I have little patience for philosophy, the purpose of pearls

not as captivating as the pile of red pits bleeding into my cutting board.

Because we love what does not happen often enough, even infection,

she thinks it’s oyster shit but I guess some kind of calcium

not as captivating as the pile of red pits bleeding into my cutting board.

The peaches are local but they aren’t ripe.

...

SOME HERONS... and some Colorado pictures!

2010-08-19T10:47:00.012-06:00

My good friend Rena flew in the other day to visit from Atlanta, where I met her almost two years ago. (We worked together as vet techs at the East Atlanta Animal Clinic, which I'm including a link for, should any of you be in that area and need to adopt a pet! They're a great group of people, with smarts and compassion for lost, sick, and injured pets.) Anyway, I picked Rena up in Denver late last week, and we commenced a fantastic couple of days exploring Colorado.

We drove up the mostly-unpaved road to the summit of Pikes Peak, where it was a good thirty degrees colder than the downtown Colorado Springs area. It was pretty fun. I was surprised that the altitude didn't really affect me at the top; Rena, however, was slightly nauseated, so we didn't hang out too long on the peak. (Um, by the way, I'm kind of proud of the fact that my brakes were considerably cooler than those of other drivers at the halfway checkpoint downhill. See, Tom? I'm taking care of the car. Now, come home and fix the coffee pot, the garage door, and the top kitchen cupboard, which I can't seem to handle.)

Rena and I also spent most of one morning/afternoon walking, hiking, and sprinting around Garden of the Gods with Flynn, the wonderdog (who is currently awaiting obedience training, FYI). We were surprised to crest one hill and find two hikers whispering to us "There are bighorn sheep right around the corner! Go see!" How awesome! There were actually five bighorns: two curled up together in the shade of one shrub, and three picking their way carefully through the sticks and rocks, eyeing us suspiciously while they snacked. It was pretty fantastic. Thankfully, Flynn didn't appear to notice them and used it as an opportunity to rest with her doggie backpack.

I also took my bike out for the first time in months. I rode to Audrey's house, then tooled around downtown, where I did my best not to get smooshed by an SUV. I found this great mural under an overpass, on the side of the Smokebrush gallery:

Rena caught up with me on Colorado Avenue. Here's a (sort of fuzzy) shot of me with my trusty steed:

After all the running around, Rena and I spent some quality time baking and making peach preserves. Here are some of our lovely accomplishments:

Blueberry muffins with streusel topping for breakfast!

Peach-Blueberry pie for dessert!

A dozen peach pits...

Peach preserves being boiled down to a golden translucence.

Needless to say, it was a fun couple of days. I was sad to drop Rena off at the Denver airport, but I know she's got cats and dogs at the clinic to love on. I've got a busy few weeks ahead of me as well, with the Colorado Springs Writers Reading Series event this Friday (tomorrow!) and fall semester kicking off on Monday. Lots of writing and reading to do!

Want me to leave you with a poem? You do? Great. It's short because I wrote three poems last night, two of which were long, rambling flops, and this one came in last. The most concise.

SOME HERONS

There are some herons
that gulp down rabbits
in marshy areas of the country
where fish are scarce
although it could be argued
that the photographs
in magazines are presented
with a bias that does not
take into consideration
maybe the herons are
just picking the rabbits up
and returning them
to their hutch somewhere.

...

Thank you all for reading!

-Abby

GETTING A HAIRCUT

2010-08-11T22:50:00.005-06:00

Hey all! I need to post a poem because it's August 11th (almost August 12th) and I haven't posted anything this month. To be honest, I haven't had much time to focus on my own writing. As I sprawled on the couch tonight (grades were turned in today for summer semester! wooo!) I saw my copy of Aaron Belz's book of poems called Lovely, Raspberry lying underneath the cushions with the dust bunnies. I sifted it out, brushed it off, and read a couple pieces. He doesn't write only funny poems, but most of them are funny, in some way. (I met him at AWP but we only discussed our preferences in types of Scotch.) Afterward, I sat down briefly to write. I got another wee narrative written from the perspective of a married male. Que sera.

GETTING A HAIRCUT

I love you so much I would let you cut my hair

right after the only other girl working in the salon

throws her blow dryer and flat iron into a grocery bag

and tells you to go to hell because she quits,

even though my hair is already too short

and I’ve been thinking about growing it longer.

When you get mad you like to tear sheets of paper

in half because you think punching pillows is too violent

and it makes a person prone to unintentionally punching

a spouse or a dog or some other non-pillow

the next time they are angry and pillowless.

One time you took a flat of peaches back to the store

because six of them were badly bruised

and when the grocer refused to give you back

your five dollars you held the receipt up in front of him

and tore it down the middle; when we got home

you said you didn’t feel like being upset anymore.

That’s why I trust you with scissors, even though

I only came in here to drop off the frozen lunch

you left at home this morning but now I’m getting

a haircut as well so you can talk it out, and I don’t

even care that you forgot to put that soft ribbon

of tissue paper between the cape and my neck.

...

THE LAST POETRY MEETING

2010-07-29T22:54:00.004-06:00

A poem for you on this warm July evening. I need to lay off the Duhamel because my stuff is just a beautiful shade of pale beside hers. Still. I write. And I mock writers and their habits while I'm at it. Take that, self!

THE LAST POETRY MEETING

Who is your inspiration

for carelessness,

for absolute carelessness?

The woman beside me says

it’s a toss-up between

John Milton

and Miley Cyrus.

The woman beside her says

she’s got this forty-year-old

nephew in Los Angeles.

I should have checked myself

before I said carelessness, to me,

is Ganesh, the Hindu god.

I don’t know why, in fact,

I know little about him

other than his elephant nose

and his fondness for sitting upon mice,

which reminds me

out loud

of my sister, who is

an endoscopic nurse

and has pulled the strangest things

from the strangest people’s

rectal cavities

though she’s never mentioned

mice, yet

and the woman beside me says

isn’t that sort of bigoted?

To think another person’s god

is the embodiment of carelessness?

I say yes, it probably is,

and she smiles

in a very unbigoted way

while the woman with

the nephew in Los Angeles says

she had a bigoted uncle once

but he died and no one

in her family felt obligated

to attend the funeral.

...

THE PAINTED URN

2010-07-20T23:00:00.005-06:00

All right, so we've moved out of the realm of psychic octopi.

I read a lot of Kay Ryan tonight, along with some Vera Pavlova, and I started wondering who my favorite female poets are. Recently, while posting sample poems for my students in English 221, I realized most of my role models are male: Tate, Neruda, Merwin, Gilbert, Bell. I didn't panic, though, and I remembered the voices of Hilda Doolittle, Denise Duhamel, Dorianne Laux. It's not like I don't read female poets. I just feel it's, well, sort of more rare to discover the female imagination that has been let loose, at least in comparison to the number of male poets who unabashedly gallivant through perfectly crazy worlds.

That got me thinking past the women on my bookshelves and more about the women in my poems. They're typically a strange, hybrid personification of guilty innocence. Why are women like this, I wondered, in all of literature? In poetry, it seems impossible for women to stray from this adaptation, even in the lais of Marie de France, which I love. I remember, as an undergraduate, one professor told me it will never be possible to see an apple in a poem and not think of Eve. I was determined to be the first to write it, a poem with an apple that didn't link the reader to its Genesis origins; I failed, of course, but I haven't yet decided how I feel about that failure. Honestly, how I feel about women in poems (and women as writers) will take decades for me to understand. I despise pride, but there is something so essential about the female voice and its role in literature, its role in imaginative writing. Men and women are not equal in terms of who they are (in terms of rights, yes, they should be). What they have to say is equally significant though, and I'm trying to reconcile that. Why are they equal? Why are they unequal?

I guess I'll keep ruminating, and the women in my poems will keep asking me when I'll cut them loose.

(poem temporarily pulled for submission purposes 7/28/2010)

...

PAUL THE PSYCHIC OCTOPUS

2010-07-12T09:55:00.004-06:00

I think one or two of my sisters may have played soccer at some point during our childhood, not because I remember watching any games, but because I seem to remember the wallet sized photos around the house... maybe it was Michelle... anyway, someone in my family once posed with a soccer ball. That's my point.

To say I'm not a soccer fan is, well, not an understatement, but it's accurate. I grew up with baseball. The first time I ever heard my knees pop was during third grade, at baseball practice, while learning how to slide across bases in a bumpy grass field near Pioneer Park. (I still can't slide. I kind of just... fall. On the base.) I played on a boys team with my best friend in Ferndale, sported a bowl cut and cussed like a pirate so other kids wouldn't pick on us. I wasn't super talented at the sport in particular; I mainly kept the outfield laughing.

Soccer was something one step closer to skiing, something I didn't understand. Besides, soccer players don't get to hit anything. I've always been partial to sports that involve not just running, but also a club of some sort, a bat, a racquet, and the smacking of other objects, the harder the better. My oldest sister tried to teach me how to play tennis when I was in middle school. Once I realized I couldn't hit the ball as hard as I wanted, that you had to aim, of all things, I decided to lose touch with that sport too (at least, until I discovered racquetball about fifteen years later. That's a game I can get into).

Eventually, I became engrossed with the physical demands of dance, and I slipped slowly from sports to the arts. I went to college and got really into theatre, decided I didn't much like actors, and got really into writing.

Fast forward almost ten years, to today, when I live in Colorado Springs, and my best teaching buddy, Audrey, is obsessed with soccer. Having lived in Britain for about seven years, "footie" is all this girl talks about. The World Cup blows her mind every four years. She knows the name of everyone who's stepped onto the pro field. Because I like Audrey, and I value our friendship, I promise her that I will watch at least one soccer match with her down at McCabes, a local Irish pub.

First match was about a week ago, between... um... I don't remember. Uruguay and someone else. I brought my poetry textbook and planned lectures. B- for effort.

I swear up and down that I will watch the World Cup final between the Netherlands and Spain. I promise not to bring my textbooks. Of course, as usual, I show up a little late and squeeze into the seat that's been saved for me RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE FLAT SCREEN next to Audrey and about a hundred other fans. I spend a lot of time wondering which players will take on shampoo endorsements after the Cup ends; some of them have just beautiful hair, long and curly and bronze. Audrey snaps me out of it, tells me that Paul, the psychic octopus in Oberhausen, Germany, has predicted that Spain will win. Wait... what? A psychic octopus?

This is something I can get into.

Unfortunately, Audrey is yelling at the television every 60 seconds and can't answer all my questions right away. Who is this Paul? Where did he come from? (Apparently he was hatched in Britain but now lives in a German aquarium.) Why do people believe his predictions? (Turns out he's been spot on with all of them.) Audrey mentions he's had death threats from other countries. That the Italians are claiming he really belongs to them, and his name is Paolo.

I manage to watch the rest of the final match, though I'm outside on the phone with Tom when Spain scores the winning goal. I can see everybody's reactions through the sticky windows: the Dutch fans with their orange face paint and wigs, slumping on their bar stools; the rogue Spanish supporters punching air and hugging each other. And Audrey, in the front, leaning back in her chair and sighing happily.

Conditions are perfect for a poem.

(poem temporarily pulled for submission purposes 7/28/2010)

...

RESIDENCY READERS

2010-06-24T19:19:00.005-06:00

Greetings from Forest Grove, Oregon!

While I'm missing my pets and the awesome weather we're apparently having in Colorado Springs right now, I just can't put a value on my experiences with the writing faculty at Pacific University's MFA Program. I've been working as the emcee for the nightly readings held in Taylor-Meade, a lovely concert hall on Pacific's campus. I'm currently staying in one of the swankiest dorm rooms I've ever seen, and I actually need to get going soon to tonight's reading!

Fortunately, I've been able to work on my poems while I've been here, when I'm not reading the fiction of my students being submitted online. I'll post some of those later! For now, here are some pictures of the fine guests here...

Bonnie Jo Campbell, author of American Salvage, finalist for

the National Book Award in 2009.

Jack Driscoll, author of the novels Lucky Man, Lucky Woman,

How Like An Angel, and Stardog. One of the nicest guys on the planet too.

Pam Houston, author of Cowboys Are My Weakness,

Waltzing the Cat, and tons of short stories.

Peter Sears, author of collections of poetry titled The Brink,

Tour: New and Selected Poems, and most recently Green Diver.

One of the best mentors, ever.

Marvin Bell, creator of the Dead Man poem

and author of Nightworks, Mars Being Red,

and over twenty other books of poetry.

Tied with Peter Sears as best mentor ever.

View from Elk Cove Winery, where the MFA Program
conducts one reading each summer. Lucky them!

View of the front of the crowd at the winery reading.
They've really had to work to fit everyone in here!

Judy Blunt, nonfiction author of Breaking Clean

and shorter pieces which have appeared

in Oprah magazine and The New York Times.

...

More pictures to come as the residency winds down... tonight's readers at Taylor-Meade are poets Ellen Bass and Joe Millar, plus fiction writer Kellie Wells!

...

WRITING OVERLOAD

2010-06-14T10:11:00.002-06:00

So, I'm about to leave Colorado for a little over two weeks. I'm going to be in Forest Grove, Oregon, at Pacific University's MFA residency, where I'll be one of two alumni volunteers, introducing brilliant writers at the nightly readings and interviewing a couple of them for Pacific's website. The days will start early and end late, and I'll be doing my best to briefly adjust to dorm life. Fortunately, Forest Grove is one of the more beautiful, quiet, and lushly green towns on the west coast, and if I can get any spare time, I'm going to go on a nice walk... maybe through the hazelnut grove up on one of the hills!

I'm excited and, as of last night, a little nervous. I'm trying to get ahead on the creative writing class I'm teaching at PPCC so I don't falter while I'm gone... unfortunately, we're going to be covering Point of View and Dialogue, two of the more difficult elements of fiction writing for beginning writers. My students this semester are dedicated and put a truly admirable amount of effort into their writing, and I mean that. Sometimes, when I read their comments, I wish I had their determination. I've been introduced to some wonderful characters in the past couple weeks, some of them in war zones, some in magical realms, and can I tell you it's a relief just to know they exist? Go students!

Anyway, I read stories, graded, and planned last night until my right eyeball was literally twitching and I had to sign off. (Sometimes, work is just not healthy. Of course, I wouldn't have had to work so late if I hadn't spent Saturday stalling, crafting and making homemade pasta, but whatever.)

I think I may be moving past this hitch on brevity. After signing off last night, I flopped face down on the couch for fifteen minutes and listened to Tchaikovsky long after Alec Baldwin's classical program had ended on the radio. I closed my eyes and retraced the steps of my day. When I sat up, I felt I had maybe ten minutes of writing within me. So, back to the computer with the timer set. Here's what I got, a poem over five lines! Hurray!

Thanks all for reading. (I know my working at the residency later this week is going to prompt more writing, and I'm looking forward to it. I'll post more as it progresses!)

GERMAN WAR BRIDE

She is alone in the church when usually

I am alone in the church,

one sleeve pulled over her hand

to wipe beneath her eyes, left to right.

When I sit down behind her she stops.

I can see a card on the pew beside her

with a man dressed in brown on it,

he is helping a young woman stand up

beside a faded blue fountain,

or maybe he is proposing to her

or kissing her ring, maybe she is a queen?

Beneath the tiny painting it says

Heilige Gerhard, Saint Gerard.

She is German. The lines running down

her face and neck are fine.

She stares straight ahead.

I say, “Bist du…shit…zufrieden?”

which is actually “Is you…shit…content?”

She shakes her head and whispers “Nein.”

We both stare straight ahead.

The children of the parish have drawn pictures

for the altar, all of them showing Mary

who touches her belly with one hand,

reaches for Elizabeth with the other.

...

STILL MORE SHORT POEMS

2010-05-31T21:59:00.002-06:00

BIFOCALS

Bifocals, having never found love,

saw my sixth-grade face and said

get me all over that.

EAR PULSE

Listen! My heart

has gone creeping up

into my ear again.

A TOAST

May you sip your rosewater tea

at seventy five and read every blurred name

scrawled into your ankles and arms.

TOAST

Jesus came back

for some peanut butter

not thinking you’d notice.

COWLICK

Cowlick on my right temple,

postal clerk says I can hold my temper.

...

BRAIDED CREEK AND MORE BREVITY

2010-05-27T12:52:00.004-06:00

I'm at the point where I'm realizing, yes, my mind is going; this penchant for short poems and mild skepticism of longer pieces is not just a phase. My attention span is no longer under construction. It's just busted and we're going to have to drive around.

I'm not at the point where I'm worried just yet. So many good short poems out there! So much fun to be had! So much to read! I'm in Seattle right now, and the day after I flew into town I made a beeline for Half Price Books, where I picked up a $5 copy of Braided Creek: A Conversation in Poetry by Jim Harrison and Ted Kooser. I like it so far. If anything, brevity provides a more subtle deadline to acknowledge while writing; yes, we may not be able to write past a project's due date, but in brevity, we also cannot write past what the tiny page allows. We have to make every word count. (And yes, this IS a picture of me, thoughtfully reading text. Look at me think!)

Sometimes I wonder if Kooser gets away with more, though, because he's so old. This might be true. (Joking. Kind of.) Anyway, the book is set up without much guidance. The reader has no sure way of determining which poet wrote which poem, and all the pieces are roughly four lines. After a few pages, I started putting together a small list of people I might ask to do a similar project, mailing each other VERY short poems (this time not associated with any specific postcard image) and keeping a tiny thread connected between each of them.

Let's start with a couple I jotted down last night, as I pretended Harrison and Kooser were conversing with me through their poems. Anyone want to leave their own response in poem form? I'm open to starting my own "braided creek".

* (Wednesday night, May 26th)

I liked him better when I thought
he was talking about muffins
not coffins

*

Everybody matters eventually.
If you're a boy you must wait
until you're a man. If you're a girl
you have to wait until you're dead.

*

Even God wishes he had
a goat to keep the yard
in check

...

POSTCARD MEMOIRS

2010-05-14T23:08:00.004-06:00

So, this isn't my great idea. It's actually stolen from the lovely brain of Sonja Livingston, who manages this awesome project called Postcard Memoirs. (It helps even more that Sonja is one of those super-sweet-in-person, writes-in-multiple-genres people. I got to hang out with her at this year's AWP conference, and I just love her.) I highly recommend you check this link out, as it will probably inspire even the busiest writers to start their own postcard project.

Some of us have seen postcard poetry prompts before. They're used in productive workshops because they work perfectly for both professionals and beginners. The idea is to keep things short, concise, precise, and of course, visual. These are tiny poems, usually written on the backs of postcards or photos, that make the image 'pop' just a little more than the eye can manage alone.

Anyway, Lish McBride, my writing buddy in Seattle, posted a link to Postcard Memoirs a couple weeks ago on facebook and I've been thinking about it off and on since. My first thought: who buys postcards? Where can I find some? Well, I found a couple snapshots I thought about using, and that could work just as well as an actual postcard. However, I drove into Denver today and stopped at the Tattered Cover to peruse the poetry section. (I sifted through all authors V-Z, thank you. Quite productive.) They have a stand of postcards there that I hovered over like a moth at a lamp post. I found seven great images, all of them connected in some weird way. My favorites were prints of Quint Buchholz's work, and I googled him when I got home. Totally. Awesome. Here's a link to one of his pages; it's auf deutsch, but I think the site is (visually) explanatory enough to navigate. His best works, in my opinion, are the ones that show the impossible looking simply accomplished.

Okay. So, the point of this post is, I think I'm going to take part in Sonja's postcard project, albeit from a distance, since I can't attend the workshop. I have a blank journal that a friend of mine gave to me for my birthday that hasn't been used yet. I dug it out of the YA section of my library (what was it doing there?) and it's currently sitting on the table, next to my stack of postcards, demanding to be written in. (Of course, it's also sitting next to a couple bills, my textbooks for this summer, three cookbooks, a lit journal, a pile of pens that don't work (why am I keeping these?) and two empty water bottles. I may consider organizing myself tomorrow.) I'm going to keep looking for postcards (I'd love to find more of Buchholz's stuff) and put them on opposite pages from the short poems I'm writing. I'll keep the poems written in pencil so I can edit as needed later, and the journal will just be for my own satisfaction. Unless, of course, someone insists on publishing it later. Heh.

Here's tonight's first (tiny!) poem in this project, which is linked to THIS painting by Buchholz. (I really hope the link works. The painting is awesome.)

ROOFTOP COWS

For an extra fifty dollars

a night you can book

our penthouse suite

which includes access

to our rooftop garden

and resident dairy cows.

Enjoy the view of the city

and feel free to smoke;

try not to speak directly

to the cows, however,

as they are constantly

wanting to know where

they are, and we find

keeping them unaware

is part of this great

establishment’s charm.

...

PACKING PEANUTS

2010-05-12T22:58:00.003-06:00

Well, Napowrimo has been over for twelve days now, and I'm just sitting down to post another poem. I thought April was a productive month, writing every day, even if I wasn't 100% thrilled with every poem I came up with.

Updates in writing: the next reading for the Colorado Springs Writers Reading Series is scheduled for Friday, May 21st, at 7:30pm. It's being held at the same place as April's event, the Inner Space studio at 322 N. Tejon. (See the blog for more updates: www.cswritersreading.blogspot.com) Our featured reader is poet (yay!) Jessy Randall. I'm looking forward to it! Because the event falls smack in between Spring and Summer terms for the local colleges, I'm hoping to get the word out to students via email, blog, loud shouting, whatever.

Here's a poem from this evening. Maybe tomorrow I'll post some more... I've been coming up with very, very short poems lately. Hopefully this isn't a sign of my attention span diminishing even further, but I've been really pleased with all the shorter poems I've been reading lately. (Namely, those of Jessy Randall, plus Aaron Belz, Pamela August Russell, and Campbell McGrath.) Maybe it's because it's the end of the semester and my brain is half fried from the grease of final essays and portfolios. Maybe I'm succumbing to the appeal of instant gratification. Or maybe these poets just rock.

Either way, I'm writing, and I guess that's what matters. Thanks to all y'all who have been sending me comments on facebook. You have no idea how excited I get over feedback!

PACKING PEANUTS

My next door neighbor left a cardboard box

full of packing peanuts on the curb to be recycled

but forgot to put a rock over the lid to keep it shut

and we had a huge windstorm which I understand

couldn’t have been predicted but still

there are packing peanuts all over the neighborhood

now and even the birds seem disappointed

and look bored when they pick at them

outside my bedroom window which is a gutter

and it’s full of white and yellow and pale green fluff

like it’s been snowing egg salad and every morning

the first thing I do is brush my teeth so this morning

as I brushed I stared out into the gutter wondering

if I’d have the balls to tell my neighbor he’s careless

if he and I happened to lock our front doors

at the same time today but more importantly

who’s dying those packing peanuts different colors

when they aren’t even meant to be seen?

...

NAPOWRIMO, DAYS 21 & 22

2010-04-22T23:09:00.004-06:00

It becomes clear that a writer is losing steam when all she can manage to write are blatant, funny knock-offs of better poems by better poets. Still.

Day 21 of Napowrimo: William Carlos Williams? Meet Mad Libs.

NOUNS

NOUN depends

upon

a red NOUN

NOUN

glazed with NOUN

NOUN

beside the white

NOUN.

Day 22: Cummings, Meet Mad Libs.

VERBS (by e.e. cummings)

(and i VERB
never VERB Joe agreeably cheerfully VERBED when
VERBED by fat stupid animals
the Jewess VERBED
the messiah VERBED successfully into the world
the animals VERBED VERBING. And I VERB she, and
heard them VERB and
in the darkness)
VERBED sharp angels with faces like Jim Europe

...

MY COUSIN'S PUBLICATION & OTHER UPDATES

2010-04-15T18:50:00.003-06:00

Just wanted to brag in my cousin Emily's stead. She recently found out that one of her poems is being published in Cricket, a magazine you can read about here. (Hope the links work. I've tried a couple from my previous posts and they go nowhere. Figures.)

Anyway, Emily has shown an interest in writing for some time, and I have a feeling it'll play a part in her career after high school. I remember going to the bookstore with my older sister Amy, a kind of Friday night ritual -- hot tea, bookstore, ice cream -- and Emily came along when she could. She's always been good for swapping recommendations for YA genre novels. Emily's fourteen, in the ninth grade, and gets to live in the Pacific Northwest where she finds plenty of inspiration. I wanted to post the picture I have of Emily and I, from a birthday party in Vancouver a couple years ago, but I can't find it. Dang.

I wanted to post Emily's poem here, and I got her permission, but then I realized I shouldn't for copyright purposes. Maybe y'all should get a copy of Cricket and check out the writing of more young students. The poem, by the way, is clear, precise, and it harnesses some well-developed imagery. I definitely wasn't writing with such structural grace when I was fourteen. Of course, I was very busy writing angsty lyrics for my guitar-wielding boyfriends, which I keep telling myself built character.

In other news, I'm looking forward to tomorrow night, which is the premier event for my newest project, the Colorado Springs Writers Reading Series. Deidre Farrington Schoolcraft, another faculty member at the college, will be reading some poems and a bit of fiction as well. We'll kick things off with an Open Mic session too and hopefully start a connection between student writers and the rest of the city. Looking forward to it, and I'm sure I'll write about it when it's over!

By the way, how's Napowrimo going for my poet friends? I'm keeping up but the past two days I've written crap. I'm off to read some Kay Ryan in hopes of getting a higher quality inspiration. Speaking of Ryan, I read a nice little quote of hers today regarding the comfort one can find in short poems. Here's the link. It's the last paragraph on the page.

Happy writing!

...

NAPOWRIMO DAY TWELVE

2010-04-12T23:32:00.004-06:00

Wow, what a great response to my last post! It was so exciting to see the comments here, in my email inbox, and on my facebook page, that I kept saying out loud to my cats, "For serious!" ...I mean, I kept resetting my classical records, sipping my tea, and exclaiming, "Very good!"

I just had a great evening to end a rather stressful weekend; I went to Monet and Ryan's house, where we held our second meeting of Dessert Club. All was well. All was brownies with kalhua & browned butter frosting, that is. After a couple hours of discussing the various cities we've lived in, the books we're reading, (all sorts of smart things) I headed home, where I pulled into the garage and immediately took Flynn out for a late-night run. We didn't make it more than a mile before the street lights started fading and I knew by memory that the sidewalks were not smooth enough for me to navigate in the dark, and we turned back. Colorado Springs had just received a brief gust of fizzy rain, and the air was clear. It felt wonderful.

Here's what I came up with for Napowrimo Day Twelve, and just in time too! It's 11:41 PM here, and I need to get to bed, ready for tomorrow's lecture on research essays. Very good!

THE OLDER ME IS SMART

I wish I was about fifty years

older than I am now because

I’m pretty sure that version

of me could write something

simple like “we are creatures

of craving and fatigue”

and someone holding my paper

might say, “ah! It’s true!”

but, as it is, I am twenty-seven

years old and the only way

someone holding a piece

of paper I’ve written on

will see any sort of truth is if

I tell them “sometimes eating

your oatmeal is better than

complaining about it”

so they can wonder about it

for a minute, probably making

the connection that rolled oats

are good for one’s digestion,

thereby decreasing hunger,

thereby eliminating a simple desire,

but realizing all the same

that what I consider brilliant now

will not be so until I have a purse

full of hard candies to prove it.

...

NAPOWRIMO DAY ELEVEN, POST-AWP

2010-04-11T23:07:00.009-06:00

This year was my first at the AWP Conference, and I have to admit, I attended mostly because it was held in Denver and I would only have to commute an hour there and back each day. Not bad, considering I wouldn't have to pay for a hotel room and flight like many of the other writers.

There were some great bits about the conference. The best part? I got to catch up with lots of writing buddies I don't often get to see. Lish McBride, author of the forthcoming YA novel Hold Me Closer Necromancer, is a good friend of mine from my time at Seattle University, and she was helping out with the University of New Orleans booth at the book fair (she got her MFA from UNO). She introduced me to some really sweet writers, sweet in personality and talent. I liked that.

Second best? The Lost Horse Press table sold out of its copies of New Poets / Short Books, which means my poetry (along with Jesse's and Karen's) is out in readerspace being viewed! Second Best Part, Part A: I sold out of the copies I brought with me as well. Yay! I wish I'd brought more, seeing how I still have eighty copies hanging out in my dining room right now.

Third best? I budgeted myself and only bought three new books, all of which were pretty affordable. I got a copy of Gregory Orr's Concerning the Book That Is the Body of the Beloved, a book of critical analyses of Imagist poems, and a book called Lovely, Raspberry by Aaron Belz--a funny poet who doesn't mind discussing the finer points of good scotch in the middle of a business transaction. Ooh! I also got the book The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley (but I bought that at a bookstore, so I don't count that as an AWP indulgence). It's great so far, more because of the young female protagonist and less because it's a goofy mystery novel, and I can't wait to buy the sequel.

Fourth Best Part: the Robert Hass reading was terrific. What a natural presence, a comfortable reader! I felt like I was curled up at a storytime session even though I was rows back in an enormous ballroom. His book Time and Materials really captures a strangely unique perspective on the length and depth of one's life. His awesome sense of humor helps too.

Much goodness ensued at the conference, let it be known. There was too much talent to take it all in within the week. I'll quickly say, however, that much frustration occurred as well, in that I saw and overheard many writers (not all!) putting each other down, struggling for attention, presenting lectures that lacked depth or insightful calls to action, and promoting the unfortunate stereotype most writers (poets in particular) have been cursed with. I'm going to suggest to the board of directors a new panel idea: The Mindful Writer: How Compassionate People Can Promote Themselves Successfully. Honestly, we--as writers--seem to take little account of others unless they are evoking our pity or inspiring a story.

During a panel discussion that branched into Question/Answer format (which inspired fewer questions than testimonials) I remembered that I was still supposed to keep up with my Napowrimo pledge, and what better time to jot down ideas than in a room full of writers? I assumed, a little selfishly I know, that I wouldn't miss much. I mentally flipped back to the last TV show I'd watched, which happened to be a documentary on avocados. (Yes, really.) And I got the beginnings of a poem jotted down. Thanks for reading!

THE HISTORY OF THE AVOCADO

tells us that this fruit was, to the Aztecs, a strange

testicle of the earth, bulbous seed weighing down

flesh that ripened only when the human hand

loosened it from its branch; that Cortez, ironically,

had difficult pronouncing its name but loved to eat it

sliced in thick chunks or spread over roast dog.

He thought it might be rich enough to neutralize poison

and although his men soon realized it was not

they discovered it tasted wonderful too with apples

or with bowls of cold water, or with nothing at all.

A Puritan once accused the avocado of being God’s

unborn son, the wrinkled, ugly egg that even angels

pray will never hatch on account of its unsightliness;

thus, avocados must be peeled with great care.

Do not be deceived by statistics, which indicate

that less than half of all American households

consume avocados. The fruit is quietly popular

with scientists, teachers, and parents, who have

admitted to showing children how to insert toothpicks

into the seed like spokes of light around a sun,

balance the seed over a glass of water, half submerged,

nurturing the growth of a new tree and all its implications,

a fatty fruit, its possible relationship with God,

the name that fails to fall over the lips of explorers.

...

NAPOWRIMO DAY SIX - THE SHED

2010-04-06T23:09:00.003-06:00

Today was a particularly lonely day.

SHED WITHOUT A ROOF

The border between

Iraq and Iran

where there is a shed

with a jagged gutter

and no roof

like some god took

a can opener to it

and nobody knows

who’s more prepared

men

or the dogs

looking down

from the hillside

into the shed

my husband touches

the pistol strapped

over his heart

and thinks

about breakfast

...

NAPOWRIMO DAY FIVE

2010-04-05T14:14:00.005-06:00

Well, it's Day Five of Napowrimo, and I'm still going strong. Of course, by the time the days turn into double-digits, my ego will need deflation. I get pretty satisfied with myself when I actually accomplish what I said I would.

Today's been a long day of writing and reading other people's writing, so I'm off to enjoy the outdoors for an hour with my dog. I finally got a new camera (r.i.p. old camera) and will be able to supplement my posts with Colorado scenery once again!

Thanks for all your comments, everyone. I love the day after posting, when my email inbox has at least five messages, none of them advertisements from expedia or amazon. Yahoo!

Enjoy the week!

HAM WITH SLICED PEARS

The old man ordering coffee

ahead of me catches my eye,

the jeans-with-jean-jacket combo

beneath a crisp red trucker’s hat.

He asks the barista how

her Easter holiday was. Nice,

she says, I mean, pretty quiet.

And he says he ate ham

the same way he’s eaten it

all his life, every Easter,

roasted in a pan half filled

with sliced pears, except

he says pears like he means

pearls, or diamonds, a ham

baked with sapphires pinned

to its sides in lieu of cloves.

The barista smiles like a good

vegetarian, lets him recount

all seven bites he took

before getting up for seconds;

he doesn’t actually eat the pears

but leaves them on the side

of his plate, it’s the juice

that matters, and the ham

soaks all of that right up.

Fruit pulp makes him think

he’s eating wet dirt and he

doesn’t like that. The barista

is picturing all this: the man

cutting into his ham with fork

and butterknife, his napkined lap,

the priceless pears scraped

into the trash bag after dinner.

The wet dirt of the world

snaking up tree trunks months

before a holiday dinner is prepared.

She hands him his cup,

paper with no lid, the whipped

cream spiraling up from

his hot cocoa—cocoa—

like a painted cathedral spire.

...

NAPOWRIMO!

2010-04-01T22:49:00.003-06:00

It's April, and it's time for Napowrimo! (That's short for NAtional POetry WRIting MOnth, I think, but I'm not sure. Whatever, it's the right concept.) I've never actually attempted this challenge before, but, because Tom's not here to distract me, I feel like I should. I thought the people who did NaNOwrimo a while ago were totally nuts, but that's because it involved novel-writing, something that I look at in the same way I look at extreme rock climbing. I like to read about it. I like to see other people do it. But I'll laugh in your face if you ask me to do it.

Anyway, poems are more my type of challenge. I look at those more like skydiving, which I would totally do. More than once, if it wasn't so expensive.

The idea is to write a poem a day for one month. What I find most attractive about this idea is that it doesn't have to be a good poem, or even a whole poem. Just a poem. Something that may or may not be something worth coming back to in your notebook.

So I'm trying. I'm not going to post the poems every day, because, like I said, they won't necessarily be in good shape or even complete. But I'll post one every couple days (hopefully), just for the illusion of accountability. Here's what I wrote out tonight. (Post Script? I have no idea why or how I came up with this idea. I wasn't thinking of anyone in particular. Well, kind of. But I wasn't really thinking very clearly at all.)

Happy Napowrimo! To anyone else participating, send me the link to where I can read your stuff. (I'm not using the poets.org site. Too chaotic and crammed.)

MORTAL WOMEN

Eventually we all make love in public,

someplace legendary like a dorm room

or a hotel lobby or behind the Christmas tree

and, most likely, our lovers do not

read us poetry afterward, instead

they ask us sleepily to read to them

because we do it so well, and we do,

and we assume it is because our lovers

enjoy poetry, that they produce romance

in the soft middles of their bones,

and what they need most after orgasm

is for us to compare ourselves

to birds or a couple of pumpkins growing

on the same vine, never a nap,

and no one sees us doing these things

other than our companions and God,

who also happens to think we are beautiful

even in the silliest positions and locations

no matter what we are saying or reading,

and Venus, patron saint of beauty,

fantasy’s image, can see us too and leans

forward in her cherry blossom throne

to look over God’s shoulder and say

That girl ought to be put down, but God says

No, let her be, see how she lets him rub her feet,

those enormous boats of hers, like she’s

letting him in on some secret, it’s divine,

God says, I can’t get enough of them,

look how she reads poetry like she’s

running out of air, like she’s sitting underwater!

And the heavens carry on and the night

does not come naturally after our public work,

but only after a strange pulse of a comet

behind Venus, behind God, behind the rows

of thrones says they’ve seen enough, stand back,

someone loosen the stars from their sockets

so they might rest their almighty eyes.

And no one even reaches for the lights before

they’re out, and everyone listens to the sound

of someone else shifting excitedly in the dark.

...

READING UPDATES

2010-03-30T20:31:00.005-06:00

Good news!

Copies of my first chapbook (titled Me & Coyote) have arrived, and I'm now able to sell some directly! Please send me a personal email with your address if you'd like an order form; I'll get that out to you as soon as possible, hopefully receive your payment, then ship a book out to you lickety-split. Or, if you must, you can order it directly from LHP right here. I've got to admit, the books are beautiful. Christine Holbert, editor at Lost Horse Press, made sure they looked stunning.

I wish I had a better picture of the book to post, but my camera is on the fritz and all I have is the shot I took to send to Tom when they first arrived in the mail. (I was giddy.) P.S. Tom says they look awesome.

Anyway, I've got more news: the Colorado Springs Writers Reading Series is officially operational, and we've got our premier event scheduled for Friday, April 16th, at 7:30pm. We're still holding the festivities at the Inner Space yoga studio downtown, located at 322 N. Tejon.

The first half of the evening will be set aside for open mic (sign up at the door, limit ten), then we will have our featured reader--Deidre Schoolcraft--give us a sneak peek at her novel and/or shorter works. Deidre is a creative writing instructor at the college with me, and I'm really looking forward to hearing her read. If you'd like to follow the progress of this series (read: follow it! Now!), click on the link above, or log onto the site at http://www.cswritersreading.blogspot.com/.

Thanks for staying tuned for all this, guys! I appreciate it. (On Friday, Tom will have been in Kuwait for one month. Am I overscheduling myself yet? Did I mention I'm advertising for violin students as well? Anyone interested?)

...

TRYING OUT THE NATURE POEM

2010-03-15T22:59:00.005-06:00

I had a wonderful weekend, considering how often I remembered that Tom won't be home for another year. A good friend of ours took me out on Sunday, and we started early-- extra early, if you count Daylight Savings. We caught the morning train headed up Pike's Peak on the cog railway, something I've wanted to try since we moved here but didn't have the balls to do by myself. There were tons of tourists. A little altitude sickness. No fox sightings, unfortunately. But it was still beautiful.

We were only able to travel a short way up the peak on account of the snow we've only seen hints of in the city over the past few days. I didn't mind. (The photo above was taken at about halfway down.) The cloud cover seemed to swoop down so quickly, and it was quite an experience to stand directly beneath it when the train let us out for a quick walk. Strange to feel moisture in the air again, even if it was freezing. I felt like I was half on the ground, half in outer space. You lose your breath easily, but your mind clears. My advice? Hold still while you're thinking. Also? The Port-o-Bowls at the pitstop aren't half as bad as they could be.

We stopped to look at the 2200 year old tree that I can't believe we haven't plowed down yet (pictured). Beauty of this sort doesn't always last long, it seems. We also saw the tree that probably wouldn't have inspired a poem if not for our all-knowing, slightly strange guide. (Fortunately, my friend and I both brought our notebooks. Writers are handy like that.) I thought I'd give the nature poem a chance; after all, I did just spend the past week helping my students dig into Mary Oliver's poems. My writing voice is still not quite as peaceful as Ms Oliver's, but I consider this a nature poem all the same.

TAKING THE COG RAILROAD UP PIKE’S PEAK IN MARCH

Mel, our guide, points out glacial reservoirs, asks us
if we know how much dynamite it takes to break up

a five-foot-square block of ice. No one knows
and Mel doesn’t tell us; he carries on, says the seventeen mile

stretch of gravel road snaking alongside the tracks
is called Ron’s Driveway because it belongs to Ron,

the man who maintains the water pipes running to town.
We catch a glimpse of Ron’s small white house

yellowed by rain and cold sunlight and snow-blower exhaust.
There are rows of small cedar birdhouses hanging beneath

the windows on hooks that must be anchored behind the panes.
Ron isn’t home, but I picture him looking something like

the Brawny paper towel man until Mel tells us
Ron is only twenty-four and single, in case we’re interested.

We rock past his house, the dangling empty birdhouses,
and the crunchy road named for a lonely mountain boy

darts off suddenly into the trees like a crow and leaves
a sleepy stream in its wake. Mel directs our attention toward

a splintered stump about ten yards away from the track. That tree
was once a stout Ponderosa Pine, Mel says, with a trunk

like a cinnamon stick and arms full of glossy green needles.
It was struck by lightning about five years ago

and Mel wishes he could have shown it to us whole.
Although, he recalls, scratching his round belly,

for the entire morning after that particular storm the woods
smelled like warm butterscotch. To this day, he’s never seen

so many foxes out hunting in broad daylight.
He wishes he could have shown us that too,

ragged red foxes following the scent of dessert
around and around before going back to their empty holes.

...

Thank you to those who have sent me comments via email. I appreciate them.

P.S. I'll keep you posted if the Colorado Springs Writers Reading Series ever gets off the ground. Still having trouble coordinating the venue, but hopefully this idea isn't dead yet.

...

WOMAN WITH MANNERS

2010-03-07T15:17:00.003-07:00

Clearly, I'm going through another dry spell with my writing (or maybe the last one just never ended). I haven't posted anything in a couple weeks, and it's largely because I haven't really had much time to write anything creative. I've also let other aspects of my life take over my oh-so-healthy List o' Priorities. I'm running a triathlon in a couple weeks in Seattle and need to improve my mile, I have to get my classes prepped for midterms, my pets are devising new ways every week to earn emergency trips to the vet's, I have a book coming out, I still haven't gotten that reading series started downtown, and I haven't practiced my violin in two weeks. Here's what I want to do:

1. Get back into a routine of practicing creative writing for at least two hours on one of my days off. I was pretty good about this in Georgia, but I've let myself get sidetracked here in Colorado. Tom gave me a "nice" compliment today from his tent in Kuwait. "Abby, you've got to start writing more often. I really love your work when you're happy and comfortable; your poems get hilarious. I hate it when you're miserable. Your poetry gets boring." So... yeah. That was a compliment, I promise.

2. Use my running/exercise as a break from writing/teaching, simply for the sake of my poor eyeballs, which are already disadvantaged as it is. Walk longer after my jogs just to enjoy a few extra deep breaths. The weather is getting gorgeous here.

3. Start advertising for violin students again, with the added note that I won't actually be able to begin lessons until April, when my life settles down slightly. This is assuming I have several people just waiting out there, desperately wishing I would take them on.

4. Give my pets a pep rally so they'll stop hurting themselves so damn often.

5. Make a list of all the good things that happen when Tom's deployed. Less laundry, cleaner bathrooms, more mushrooms in my dinners, lots of What Not to Wear, meditation music blasting while I write, letters in the mailbox, longer writing group meetings. I've got to cheer myself up somehow.

6. Ease up on insisting this reading series start as soon as possible. I'm going to be here for a while. I can frickin relax.

All right. A plan! I feel better already. Now I can post a poem. This is the first piece I've written in the past two weeks, and I haven't had a chance to show it to anyone yet. Here she be.

(I plan on keeping everyone posted on the book's release date, as well as date/time info for the reading series. I can only kick back for so long.)

WOMAN WITH MANNERS

That’s what I like to see

a woman with manners

who leaves her car unlocked

in the grocery store parking lot

after stuffing her trunk full

of toilet paper lettuce brie bleach

leaving it under the careful watch

of four teenagers planted

like moldy beanpoles

outside the Family Dollar

this woman shoves her cart

back through the Safeway sliding doors

taking tiny strides because

she’s not paying another twenty

dollars for Mrs. Lee

to stitch up the side seam

not after that time she saw Mrs. Lee

shove one glowing white arm

up the front of her husband’s blue polo

with her husband still inside it

even though Mrs. Lee said she was

just trying to feel the rip

this woman plugs her empty cart

back into the bumpered lanes inside

without even glancing back

at her tinted windows at Family Dollar

and when she lets go the cart handle

there’s a lady shaped like a teapot

stopped behind her saying

I couldn’t help but notice you’ve got

enormous ankles just like mine

where did you get your boots

and the woman with manners

says she bought them online

and the lady like a teapot whistles and says

dang I never buy anything from the internet

then walks away leaving our heroine

standing in front of the cart tracks

like the head of a great silver centipede

wiping her hands with a sanitizing napkin

scraping quickly the underside

of each white fingernail.

...

TEA WITH WIVES

2010-02-10T20:52:00.009-07:00

Some of you know that I'm married to an infantry officer, and that his job sometimes requires me to spend time with women I wouldn't typically meet on my own. I want to make it clear, right now, that I don't think badly of these women. They lead unusual lives that the general public doesn't always understand, and the majority of them are incredibly strong-willed. However, I don't typically travel onto military bases unless I have to (Tom and I always live in the city) and I can't seem to help sudden bouts of shyness when I'm forced to attend pre-deployment (or mid-deployment, or post-deployment) meetings. The military lifestyle is not mine, but it does affect Tom, so I stay involved from a polite distance.

Well, Tom's getting ready to leave for Iraq in a couple weeks. I'm less than thrilled, but I'm hoping it will be tolerable this time around, considering it's not his first trip to a combat zone, and I definitely have enough going on here with my writing and teaching to keep me busy. Anyway, the get-togethers for us "army wives" are starting up again. I'm asked to familiarize myself with the other women I will need to stay in touch with during Tom's deployment in case of emergency.

One such meeting happened last night, when a group of about ten women gathered at a local bath & body shop to mix our own bath products and scents. It really was a creative, fun idea, and I'm grateful for the opportunity to do something besides talk about our husbands and their jobs. (I made three bottles of liquid handsoap: one in peppermint, one in Eternity for Women, and one in oatmeal, milk and honey. Wonderful!)

The night did involve lots of talking about the military though, and I felt lost and confused through most of it. I realized I'm not even a fraction as familiar with what Tom does all day compared to what these women know about their husbands. I know Tom is a captain and he goes to base every day. I have a vague idea of what he's responsible for. And I know he works out a lot. Other than that? I'm pretty content to float absently in the outer space that is my own life. I write and teach and read like crazy; I tune my violins and clean the house and go jogging and edit poems. I help Tom study for various tests (do YOU know the firing range for a Bradley Fighting Vehicle??), try not to wash his flame-retardant uniforms with the Downy ball, and help him do voice-overs for our pets.

Anyway. The point is, Tom's job is Tom's job and my job is mine. I'm much more familiar with who he is outside of the military than who he is within it. And the day he has to go to a departmental meeting for English adjuncts (with full knowledge of everything I do and every person I interact with) is the day Tom starts taking some serious notes.

I went to Montague's Tea Parlour today and wrote a poem, now that I've had some time to think about how last night went. (Many thanks to the waitress who brought me a few sheets of paper.) FYI: Look into how poets approach truth and beauty (and music) simultaneously. They don't always have to match up in order to communicate the right message. Not all circumstances are exact in poems like these because I don't write to offend. It's a sub-culture, basically, the "army lifestyle," and should be viewed only with an open mind.

(poem pulled for submission purposes!)

...

2010-02-04T17:53:00.005-07:00

I've been diving and re-surfacing over and over again (lately) in my dry spell. It seems, the more I try to write daily, the more crap I write consistently. So I'm experimenting with taking some time off. I know, it's rough, but someone's gotta do it. : ) I'm posting a poem below that's been floating through my brain for the past few days.

In other news, however, I've recently started a public readings series in downtown Colorado Springs. I found a venue that's happy to donate space (as well as help with advertising), and, if things go as planned, the Colorado Springs Writers Reading Series will showcase its premier event on a Friday evening in March! This will be really special, I think. The happy hosts are the folks at Inner Space, a very quiet, lovely open room most often used as a Yoga studio. However, it's also been used for small concerts, and it will make a perfectly intimate setting for those creative writers in the area who want to publicize their work.

The format will be much like the Arden Student Reading Series I attended in Columbus. (Obviously, I really liked the way CSU did it.) The first half of the evening will be dedicated to Open Mic, where writers will sign up to read beforehand. (Those students of mine who have expressed interest? Plan on being bombarded with my requests to participate.) Then we'll have a short break, during which I will bribe people to return with some awesome vegan delicacies, and the second half of the show will feature a designated reader--a local writer who is either in the process of publishing or already has a book out there.

This is a fantastic opportunity for the whole town to familiarize themselves with what local writers are creating... plus, this is the perfect date night. I mean, Inner Space is directly upstairs from Rico's Wine Bar and Coffee Shop; get some dessert, some coffee, wander around Poor Richards bookstore, then head upstairs for a stimulating evening of literary fabulousness. It'll give you something to talk about on your way home!

And that's about all that's been happening lately. I hope that the local writers (particularly those students at Pike's Peak Community College and the other local schools) will turn up for it. And, you know, if any of my family members in different states want to show up to cheer me on in general? I'd be up for that too.

Finally, here's one of the poems I haven't tossed from the past week. Enjoy! (Well, it's kind of strange. Enjoy, but in a weird way that makes it okay to get swallowed up by birds.)

IN THE TURKEY’S BELLY

He swallowed me whole when I told him he lacked the ferocity

of a national bird, and now I’m regretting that statement

not only because it is dark and the walls of his body smell of burnt daisy,

but also because I was quite wrong, and as I barreled down his throat

I saw he is very much a cruel animal, with strange guts, so silken

they seem to be able to take anything inside and digest it.

Already my hair has fallen out. My fingernails are gone. He is a good monster.

Worthy opponent, the turkey! I wonder, if I were to survive until November,

would I be released in the backyard by my wife, who will surely

assume the role of slaughter master for the holidays?

If she takes the animal where I’ve always taken them before,

I will most likely be freed beneath the diseased apple tree furthest from the road.

No one eats from it, the apple tree, with its blistered fruit

and bark like bread dough. I’ve told my children it’s because of the blood

that runs into the ground there, where we’ve taken the animals on holidays.

Nothing that drinks blood can be natural, I’ve said.

It’s only now, after having some time to reflect, that I see

we’ve offered the tree nothing but blood all these years, and it probably

has nothing better to do than rot itself with bad fruit.

I suppose it isn’t right to neglect the trees in one’s yard,

nor is it wise to be so brutally honest with one’s holiday dinner.

It occurs to me that I should speak out loud now that I’m repentant

and perhaps my captor will forgive me. I wish he would drink some water.

I put my face where I think his throat begins,

where I think my voice might carry toward his brain.

If I survive until November, I say, calmly, the first thing I will do is salute you

as you lie open on the ground. Worthy bird! Now, let’s move us toward

the water pail, shall we? but we do not move forward or backward.

I feel him shift his feet and sigh, the way a pregnant woman does,

the way a turkey might if he swallowed a man.

...

Ugh, I wish I could figure out the formatting on this blog site. But I can't. Anyone know how to get it to stop double-spacing itself, especially when you're copying and pasting from a Word document? It also gets a kick out of ignoring my requests on font sizes. Weird.

NAMASTE

2010-01-28T20:04:00.003-07:00

I've met some perfectly lovely yoginis in my lifetime, and they've all served as wonderful muses, either for inner peace or bad poetry. In this case, it was the latter. I had a nasty run-in with my namaste today.

NAMASTE

the divine light

within me

acknowledged

the divine light

within you

then she started

throwing stuff

...

2010-01-12T21:23:00.002-07:00

Thanks to those of you who've been posting comments or sending them directly to my email inbox. I appreciate them, and I keep track of them for revisions.

Tonight, I fixed a cup of Market Spice tea, sprawled on my office floor with a beat up paperback copy of Sappho's poems, and, for some reason, started thinking about eyebrows and their origins.

(Note: I just finished deleting a rather long-winded excuse for how I can relate Sappho to eyebrows in seven easy thoughts. It was rubbish. Suffice it to say I just wasn't paying attention to my reading when I wrote this poem.)

EYEBROWS

In my dream I’m lying
on an operating table
and God is standing over me,
thinking, stroking the beard
behind his surgical mask.
Ladies? he says, I’m having trouble
with the eyebrows.
And three winged women
hover behind him,
thinking, fists on their hips.
One says, I liked the pine boughs.
Another says, no,
they were a little too festive.
The third asks, what’s wrong
with the fishing lures?
God turns and rummages through
a silver bin beside me,
pulls out two baby barn owls
the color of pepper shakers.
They squirm gently in his hands
but seem too sleepy to protest.
Ah ha! God says.
He tilts his head, pops a kink
in his neck and leans down
over my forehead.
The women nudge each other
and nod their heads
as if to point at everything,
God, his bin, the owls, and me.

...

A MORE EXCITING LIFE

2010-01-08T16:06:00.003-07:00

Let's take a vote. How many people think I need to speed up time to two weeks from now so I can start working already? How many people want to be taken off this mailing list? How many of you wish I'd take up knitting again?

A MORE EXCITING LIFE

Once upon a time there was a man
who was very tired of selling plants
from the flower shop he inherited
and one night as he fed the koi fish
in the display pond he wished for
a more exciting life. The next day,
he woke up falling out of bed,
tumbling upward until his feet
were firmly planted in a storm cloud
about two hundred feet above the shop
and his tiny apartment window.
He saw customers begin to line up
at the door shortly after nine o’clock.
He thought they might look up and see
him standing upside down in the sky
and maybe fetch a fire engine
but they just looked at their watches
and each other, then started shrugging
and walking back to their cars and bicycles.
The man in the sky called and called
to them but no one heard. He waved
his arms and swung from the cloud
like a strange, man-shaped chandelier.
He missed his apartment and worried
about the pansies, which would need
to be covered later on when it rained.
He could feel the storm cloud leaking
through his socks into his flannel pants.
He figured he could cry because no one
was in the sky to see him so he wept.
His face was snotty like a little boy’s
and he wailed and took back his wish
a hundred times. He cried until
he was exhausted and had nothing
to do but hang there and watch the koi fish,
which were very small orange dots
from his perspective and all they did
was swim in lazy figure eights, wondering
where their breakfast had got to.

...

2010-01-07T22:44:00.003-07:00

Another poem, after reading some wonderfully funny ("bad") poetry. I need to go to bed. I also need to stop flipping through my book of Magritte paintings because some of the stuff I'm writing makes absolutely no sense at all.

Hey, another thing, how do you indent on here? None of my poems show their exact shape because I'm not sure how to indent lines.

KIND OF LIKE THAT TIME WE WENT TO A HOCKEY GAME IN
NOTHERN EUROPE AND NO ONE STOOD UP OR CHEERED BUT
EVERYONE CLAPPED POLITELY NO MATTER WHO SCORED

and I
looked
at you
and said
a little
too loudly
whose
side are
we on
anyway?

...

TWO MEN WATCH A MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN WALK BY

2010-01-07T19:59:00.002-07:00

A poem for this evening. I'm sitting in my living room, sipping cinnamon tea (it's below zero outside) (yes, I plugged the car in), and I have absolutely nothing to do. Actually, no, I have plenty to do, I'm just choosing to be bored instead. I could alphabetize my library, organize some composition readings, mop my floors, fold the heap of laundry in the basket... So I sink into the couch even further, crack open my copy of B Is For Bad Poetry and try to beg some ideas out of it. For one reason or another, all I can picture is the drugstore that used to stand on Vista Drive when I was growing up in Ferndale, Washington. I started thinking about crazy old men and nice old men. I thought about whether women should be real or fake.

Anyone want cocoa?

TWO MEN WATCH A MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN WALK BY

and they’re not so pretty themselves,
slumped against the drugstore window.
The younger one holds a lady’s purse,
lumpy white leather with gold buckles.
The older man (maybe they’re brothers,
the way they lean toward each other
when they speak) (or cousins,
they drink from separate soda cans)
the older one says, under his breath,
that woman there is about as authentic as
those rosary bracelets my first wife used to buy,
the kind that cost a fortune even though
they always had an odd number of beads.
It’s supposed to be ten, right,
the younger asks, louder than the older man,
ten Hail Marys at a time, right?
Yeah, but my point is that lady over there
is up to her eyeballs in fake body parts.
God bless her, the younger one says,
tucking the purse tighter beneath his armpit.
This thing is god-awful heavy, he adds,
but the older man says stop whining,
and they finish their sodas in peace.

...

NEW LOCATION....AGAIN

2010-01-05T13:59:00.007-07:00

Whew, I'm officially almost kind of settled in Colorado Springs now, fresh from a long, drawn-out move from Columbus, Georgia. Don't get me wrong, I was more than happy to take a detour through New Orleans to hang out with Lish and some of her fantastic fam. (Even though there was no time for writing and pancakes, this time. Oh well.) However, breaking down in Dalhart, Texas, was no fun at all. In fact, the $800 we paid to have Tom's VW towed to Colorado wasn't exactly super either.

That being said, we're here, we're in our new house, and we're exploring the neighborhood. Would you like to see some pictures? Tom and I recently took a couple of short hikes at Garden of the Gods, which was gorgeous. Flynn loved it, but any dog off her leash would.

Here are two shots of the trails we rambled. Nice, huh? Still a dusting of snow on the ground, and it's usually around freezing, but for the most part it's gorgeous and sunny here. I think my mom would love it. Anyone else want to visit? The Hotel Murray Angstadt is open for business!

I'm hoping to get a writing group together soon, and I'm still scoping out places to advertise. If I can't find anything (or anyone) I might just go back to craigslist and see what happens. There is a public library just a mile away or so... I bet I could find people with a flyer there...

Currently, I'm waiting for the semester to start at Pike's Peak Community College. I have a training session this Friday to help get instructors accustomed to putting the majority of their learning materials, handouts, syllabi (read: everything) online. I was a little nervous at first, simply because I'm a big supporter of face-to-face teaching with only the occasional use of technology, usually just to stay in touch and update students on current events. My nerves are calmer now; I've realized that this might be a blessing in disguise, which I can turn into a learning experience. More and more schools are cutting back by eliminating as much paper cost as possible, so I should probably adapt sooner than later. (Now I'll focus all my worry on whether or not the students will be as cooperative as I prefer.) I'm currently in the market for a good flat-bed scanner so I can keep using my personal library as a supplement to classroom texts... anyone know of a good place to find one? Tom's already struck out at WalMart (not my first choice), Sears, and Target. Maybe amazon?

I'm also prepping an application to University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. I'm really excited to see how many creative writing courses they have there, and I'd love to be around that, even if I'm teaching introductory writing courses instead. We'll see what happens.

I'm also reading a couple new books right now, a few of which I really want you to know about. First, James Tate's most recent book of poems called The Ghost Soldiers. It's pretty much awesome. I fall in love with his imagination over and over. Read it! (Even you guys who say you "don't do poetry". You'll love it.)

The second book I've gotten into is 29 Gifts: How a Month of Giving Can Change Your Life by Cami Walker. It's a relatively quick read (or maybe only I think so because I tore through it on my Kindle while sitting in the DMV waiting area... for three hours...) and it's uplifting without being cheesy. I know, some of us writers are jaded and avoid the sentimental like the plague, and I'm not saying this is sentimental, but it's, well, feel-good. It's inspiring. In fact, I've even visited the website that Walker constructs mid-book, http://www.29gifts.org/. I'm seriously considering taking part in their movement, but I think I need to get a few of my marbles settled first. Maybe in a day or two. Anyway, my point is, read the book. (Speaking of books, I'm also on goodreads now. Look me up!)

I guess I'll end this post with a poem, even though my writing has been sluggish these past few days. I've only started writing once a day again, let's see, since Saturday? Before that, I don't think I wrote anything for two and a half weeks while we were on the road.

This poem is called "The New Woman." I like to think about having my whole person transplanted and reconstructed sometimes. Then I thought, if I got a Perfect Job instead of just a Boob Job or Nose Job, all the other women in the world would be jealous. No one likes a smartass. But what would a perfect woman be? Damn near too bright to look at, I think.

Enjoy!

THE NEW WOMAN

It is tough
I think
for women
to smile
at me when
they see
I’ve had
my head
made into
a golden ball
and my body
has been
reconstructed
into a doorway
of light.
I probably
remind them
of those long
nights when
they were kids
sent to
their rooms
while their
parents
wasted the night
staying up
to watch
the weather.

...

NEW POETS

2009-12-16T14:00:00.009-07:00

Current Events on the Poetry Front:

I got a message from Marvin Bell the other day. He's going to be editing the fourth volume of "New Poets / Short Books" published by Lost Horse Press, and he wants me to be one of the three featured poets in the collection. Nifty! Even though I was in the middle of frantically tying up loose ends before moving to Colorado (and had just finished grading finals) when I got his message, I squeezed in a few hours with my new manuscript.

You can read about the New Poets series here, on the Lost Horse Press website. (There's a menu button that says "New Poets Series". Pretty simple.) Basically, Marvin picks three poets each year to feature in an anthology of sorts. We each submit 20ish pages of poetry, about a chapbook's worth. They're edited for the next month or so. Then the press prints 500 copies (a small run, but it's a small project, in theory) with the three books inside.

My small book is titled Me and Coyote, and, of course, I highly recommend it for your reading pleasure. I'll definitely be posting a link here later on, in April most likely, when copies become available and you are pushed and shoved to buy one. Or you could just get a copy off amazon.

I finally got a sophisticated About the Author photo taken by Sara Randolph, an awesome photographer in the Columbus area. Look at some of her work here! She was a pleasure to work with. I met her downtown and we made a mad dash to get some shots taken by the older brick buildings downtown between torrents of crazy rain. Anyway, I'll be picking up the finished product tomorrow evening, and I hope I'll get a minute to post the photo. Mostly so I can sit here looking at my own blog thinking, dang, I'm pretty!

Still currently entered in the Cider Press Review book award contest. Anyone else heard about their past scandal? And the rebuttal? I'm still not sure what to think. I guess I'll have to wait and see what the results are.

My writing group met for the last time today! I'm sad to be leaving, knowing that I won't be able to sit down with Crystal and Charish every other Thursday over our portabella paninis at Fountain City. Boo. (By the by, Charish has her own poetry blog here.) I hosted our last meeting and we feasted on my homemade baguettes, some brie, and gingerbread cookies. Yum.

I got a quick picture of Crystal (left) and Charish (right) before we wrapped things up. Nice, no?

I started thinking about the other writing buddies I've left in different parts of the country... then I thought maybe I'd share some photos of those writers with you.

Wish I'd gotten a picture of Karen and the crew in Atlanta. I did have a wonderful writing partner in Atlanta named Christa Shelton, who now does some wonderful work with Help4Youth, a non-profit organization that she founded with Joshua Olatunde. They perform for school assemblies and encourage kids to understand the sciences through art--a great concept. Here's a photo of the two of them from a camping trip we all took to the Gulf coast:

Here's a photo of the writing group before Atlanta, when I still lived near Anchorage, Alaska:

That's Connie Ambler (left), me (center), and DeeDee Zobian (right). A nice couple of ladies! But before I was in Anchorage, there was my group in Vancouver:

(Why this picture is so incredibly small, I have no idea.) That's Katherine Van Shoonhoven (left), who has a gift with watercolor...check out her work here... and Gregory Manin in the middle. Miss our sessions too! Of course, I can't leave out those critics with whom I met every six months for the past two years (another wee photo):

That's Deb Tenney (left), Linda Weiford (center), and Adrianna Buonarroti (right). These women have been able to critique my work at all hours, in all moods, while cooped up in dormatories and windstruck hotels on the Oregon coast. They're brilliant writers. Deb's work you can find on her blog. Linda's been writing non-fiction and working as a journalist for years; she's gutsy and smart and, well, loud, but in a really eloquent way. Adrianna's got an intricate magical realism novel going right now and has been working under the mentorship of Molly Gloss for some time. Adrianna's probably one of the most patient people I know, in practically every respect.

Well, I guess I should end this post. I'm all nostalgic now. To Crystal, Charish, Christa, Karen, DeeDee, Connie, Katherine, Gregory: Thanks for the help! Hope you're all still writing...

...

WHAT I NEED

2009-12-03T08:04:00.003-07:00

I was gathering my purse and coat after the last reading of the year for Arden's Student Reading Series (Selena Anderson and Kristin Taylor were wonderful) when a nice-looking fellow approached me with a question. He wanted to know if he could find my goat poem anywhere, that he and his wife had both enjoyed it at my reading in October. Two things occurred to me: 1) I rarely get requests from people who don't look crazy. 2) I haven't even sent the goat poem out to publishers, and I have no good reason for that. This poem is a lightweight and has been read several times at readings in Oregon.

Of course, it helps to be in the same place for longer than 6 months at a time; a permanent address makes submitting work a hell of a lot easier. I haven't submitted to more than 10 journals or so in the past year. However, I think I might be in Colorado for at least one solid year (starting next month) and should probably consider pushing my work "out there" more often. Any suggestions on a nice home for my poem "What I Need"?

WHAT I NEED

what I need is a goat
a mountain goat, a billy goat
a pretty little pygmy goat
with knobby Puck-like horns
salt-and-pepper coat
tight as a drum
a big balloon belly
I need a goat
to keep in our yard
to follow me everywhere
to take to work
I need a goat
who’s appetite incarnate
who would swallow
the moon
if he could but reach it
a goat to eat
tin cans pizza boxes
orange peels and
dirty napkins
eat gifts we don’t want
broken bookcases
worn out shoes
the chess set we never use
recipes gone bad
beer bottles band-aids
pictures that make me
look fat
I need a goat
to choke down books
with bad endings
stupid poems
utility bills
magazines with celebrities’
butts on the cover
I need a goat
to help me teach high school
devour late essays
uncomfortable chairs
broken pens bad erasers
sticks of chalk
pounds and pounds
of coffee grounds
makeup bags compacts
confiscated ipods and porn
I need a goat
with an appetite for words
who will gobble up
every fuck! I say
when I should’ve said darn
every wrong definition
every mispronounced name
every last crumb
of ridiculous chit-chat
I need a goat
a pretty little pygmy goat
to live in the yard
so every time you said
something you wish
you hadn’t we could
pour it into his dish
stroke his prickly ears
while he slurped it up
and ate the bowl
washed it down with a pair
of mismatched socks
we could name him
Poppy or Sunflower
or Butchie or Bert
and we would feel better
the house would
stay cleaner
life would be easier
if I had a goat

...

MANUSCRIPT AHOY!

2009-11-20T13:58:00.008-07:00

Woo hoo! I am finally shipping off my first book-length manuscript, and it's going to (hopefully) land in the laps of those wonderful editors at the Cider Press Review.

This year, CPR's Book Award is being judged by David St. John, a poet whose work, to me, inspires patience and ferocity, simultaneously. (Yeah, I said it.) Anyway, this is the first time I'll be submitting this kind of manuscript (unless you count my borderline-comical attempt at a chapbook back in 2003) (which I don't count) (because it was terrible) (no, you can't read it). I like to think that David's instruction thus far through Pacific University is what's making me confident enough to submit. For some reason, the idea of having him at the helm of a contest isn't as nerve-wracking as any other poet. I just can't picture him shredding manuscripts and cackling over the flames that consume my About the Author page. He's so damn nice.

I don't have a whole lot to report, other than the growth of my short collection of poems mocking poetry. I've got a working title (thanks, Sarah) but I'm still adding to its content.

I'm considering reducing it from 50 poems to 30... or so. I'm at 21 right now, and although it's still coming easily, I don't want to get to, you know, 43, and just start eeking them out for no reason other than bulk. I spent my office hours today writing poems that make fun of the I'm-A-Woman-Let-Me-Prove-It-Then-You-Can-Fear-Me poems, the I'm-A-Man-Let-Me-Prove-It-Then-You-Can-Respect-Me poems, the Poets-Are-Fascinated-By-Birds poems, and the Look-How-I-Can-Write-About-The-Seasons poems. So far so good.

Thanks to every one for reading! Oh, hey, and thanks to Charish for tell me how to put photos and links up on this thing. I'm making slow advances toward becoming almost-tech-savvy. Slow, I say!

...

STUPID TITAN

2009-11-17T14:19:00.001-07:00

Poem for a rainy, foggy November afternoon in the south.

STUPID TITAN

They say Prometheus
brought a bucketful
of water to our planet
after his first delivery
but no one wanted it.
We were all lighting up
our trees and bushes
and straw huts
dancing around like dogs
shouting hey Prometheus
look what we did
and the great titan himself
rolled his eyes
rolled a cigarette
and waited for the flood.

...

NEW PROJECTS

2009-11-12T08:50:00.004-07:00

Hi guys!

This post won't include a poem; it's more of an update. A poetry update, though.

I have two new projects going on right now. The first is a book contest entry through Cider Press Review, which David St. John will be judging. David's a lovely individual and worked as an insightful instructor during my time at Pacific University. In fact, I've never felt 100% comfortable with sending out a book-length manuscript until I heard that David would be the final judge. Not that that guarantees any awards, let alone glowing feedback, but something about the way I've seen David work made me think it would be okay to fail in front of him. This being said, I'm compiling about 60 pages of poetry, making it my first official book. First prize in this contest is publication of said book by Cider Press, a wonderful organization that puts together quality, artistic compilations. I wouldn't say I plan on winning. (Cider Press has a very talented reader base that has, in general, been writing for a much longer time than I have. They have wisdom and experience on their side.) Actually, one of the best things that will come of this is having a manuscript by the end of this month, one that I can start sending out to other publishers when I get more "okay" with its finality. It'll be nice to put my first selection of poems together, mostly so I can continue on, swimming straight toward my next book-length piece.

Right now, my book is split up into three numbered sections: the first group of poems exposing my thoughts on the multi-faceted lives of women. It's got a feminine vibe, with most of my humorous pieces hanging out there. (This section is headed with an eerie quote from Charlotte Perkins Gilman, however.)

The second section's got all my "war poems" tied together. Here, I expose my observations on Tom's experience with deployment as well as the wars of the past. This section includes several published pieces, including the one from CALYX's current issue, "Late Autumn in Vancouver & Baghdad: The Preservation of Women".

The third and final section showcases my more surreal/narrative poems, including the title piece, "Breakfast With An Idiot", which, by the way, has nothing to do with Tom. : ) This section falls under a wonderful quote from one of surrealist Andre Breton's poems: "All at once too much freedom had been given to me..." I love that line. Not only does it suggest the sometimes-frightening power of our own imaginations, it also makes us second-guess our love of freedom.

Moving on.

My second project (and my current favorite) is a collection of 50 poems, all of which are hellbent on mocking poetry and poets themselves. Sarah helped me come up with the title (while sitting at her desk in Everett, Washington), which ended up as such: "50 Poems: A Compendium of Rather Short Poems, All Of Which Mock Poetry And Poets Alike, Vaguely, At Times, But Usually Pretty Clearly." I like it!

These poems, I think, stem from my study of accessibility in contemporary poetry. Why do poets write the way they do? Why do people unfamiliar with poetry seem to fear it? Why is it so hard to understand? Why are artists, by banking on enigmatic wordplay, effectively killing off their own art? Why do "normal people" distrust poets? Why are readings only attended by other writers? (I know this is not only caused by interests alone. There's something about poets--or poetry--that pushes others away.)

Anyway, I've been interested in contemporary poetry's accessibility (or lack thereof) for the past 5 years or so. In fact, I wrote my graduate thesis about it, hoping to uncover a way for new writers to avoid the pitfalls of inaccessibility.

These new poems, my compendium (a word that Sarah insisted upon, considering its multi-syllabic, infrequently used makeup), tackle the great poems of our past, the most wonderful, powerful, moving, sorrowful, passionate pieces of humankind, and effectively (I hope) crushes them, pounds them down, and shrinks their purpose and message into short, easy-to-swallow, hilarious little condescensions. Perhaps I can include a preview. The following is the first poem I wrote for this collection; it's a piece that I think sums up a lot of what a poet really wants to say when she sits down to write. It is titled, "That Sunset, The Moon, Your Car, Her Hair".

THAT SUNSET, THE MOON, YOUR CAR, HER HAIR

.
.I can’t
. help it
.
.everything
.
.reminds
. me
.
.of
. me
.

I just want to point out, right now, that I realize I am assuming the role of the self-centered poet here, and that I am embodying the very creature I aim to mock. I'm okay with that. Poets are annoying. Myself included.

Basically, I'm out to laugh at myself and others. Hopefully this book is a good way to do it. As it stands, I'm currently 9 poems deep into this 50-poem project. It's still in the infant stages. But it's coming together nicely, methinks. Actually, in one hour, I'm scheduled to show it to my writing group downtown. We'll see what they think. As far as publication for this book, I'm not certain just yet how I'll go about it. The guy I share an office with at CSU, Johnny Summerfield, is the head of New Plains Press, and he's mentioned that I should show him my work. (Eegads, he's also the director of the writers' retreat that goes to Sicily for one month every summer for some quiet time. I might have to ask him more about that.) Anyway, I'm not sure what to do as far as publication interests. Should I look for a specialized-humorous-poetry press? Or go with the ones I know and read? There ain't a helluva lotta funny presses left living these days.

Well, this has been refreshing. Thanks for reading! Hope everyone has a wonderfully productive end of 2009. And Happy Thursday!

...

BEAUTIFUL BEAST

2009-11-03T07:19:00.002-07:00

Tom says I'm terrible at keeping this thing updated. But here's a new poem! Actually, it was written last month. But Peter Sears gave it a thumbs up, so I'm posting it anyway. By the way, Peter's poem "The Beast" will be in his new book, and I can't wait to check it out. (The best poem? The one about driving His Weakness around in the backseat of his car.) So, here's to you, Peter.

BEAUTIFUL BEAST

In the single-room cabin he built on the river
he scatters his fishing poles like dirty socks
and survives on noodles, bananas, and trout.

He once told a priest he’d wanted to get married
but never got around to it, which was a lie
because he had been around to it when he was in his twenties

but he didn’t see what other men saw in their wives,
recipes, pearls, white whicker trash cans in the john.
He wanted a woman who cleaned his rifle and disappeared.

He doesn’t think he’s grown too old to attract a woman
nor does he believe his cabin has made him a hermit.
He’s hip enough to hold a grudge against Jane Fonda

and young enough to keep a condom in his wallet.
His father used to call him Buck, and his mother once said
he moved from room to room so quietly as a child

he reminded her of a beautiful beast being hunted.
He sometimes pretends he is a magical young buck
and wades into the river without his fishing line, just to stand there,

majestically, like he’s balancing a heavy crown on his head.
He can’t imagine a wife understanding this. The fish
have come so close he’s felt their fins slapping his boots.

...

CHAMORRO LOVE RECIPE

2009-10-18T07:52:00.002-06:00

Ah, Frank, the Chamorro, and best next-door-neighbor we've had in a long time. God help me if you read this.

CHAMORRO LOVE RECIPE

Frank swears there’s Chamorro blood rioting in his veins;
it keep his hair dark and causes some nasty heart palpitations.

His backyard is full of washing machines.
He owns a small plumbing business and he switches the parts

out of each machine so often on slow days
that he no longer knows which belt belongs to which drum.

When it takes more than two hours to gut one washer
and reconstruct another, I send for the police.

They’ve come over twice in the past month
to pry Frank’s tools from his bloodied hands

while he hollers and pants on the floor of his shed,
screaming about how no self-respecting ex-Guamanian warrior

will be bested by some piece-of-shit tin can
designed to scrub the lace off ladies’ underwear.

He destroys a perfectly good washing machine
every time this happens.

Last Friday I brought him a turtle shell I found by the riverbed.
I thought he could use it as a water bowl for his cats

but Frank said he used to wear his father’s tortoise-shell belt buckle
until he lost it in a flood ten years ago.

He cleared his throat and put his hands on his hips,
said he’d like to think of me as a daughter from then on

if I didn’t mind. He wanted to cook me some island food,
tapioca or maybe some hibiscus buds baked into a pie.

He glanced at my broad shoulders, my narrow feet,
and told me a Chamorro’s feast sticks to one’s bones,

keeps the eyes a pretty shade of green and leaves the warriors
swooning in a woman’s yard like a flock of toads.

...

VANITY

2009-10-07T10:31:00.004-06:00

So, I'm giving meter a go. But I'm notoriously incorrect in the way I stress the unstressed, and soften the stresses, if that makes sense. At least it works as a story.

I once had a poem ("The Hussy") accepted for publication in the Cider Press Review, and I contacted the editor to discuss a revision. She wrote back and said, "No, don't change it! We really like how it's written in trimeter, and that's so rarely done!"

My response said a lot about my level of experience. "Really? Trimeter? [frantically digging out the poetic dictionary to see an example of said meter description. tri...tri...tricycle?...means three...] Oh! Yes, well, that WAS my original intention. Wouldn't want to change THAT. Never mind."

VANITY
written in trimeter (except line 5)

I am watching my cat lose her patience
with a shiny black beetle outside.
She is letting him crawl up the post
on which our mailbox is fixed
then batting him down easily—twice,
chewing him lightly each time
to check his wings. From here,
my shaded kitchen window,
I can see his shell cracking
and imagine my cat searching
the reflection of her eyes.
She is vain but it seems practical,
not ugly as it is on a woman.
I have wished I was her before.
The beetle refuses to die,
rising and falling on
the post like a flag. I want
to snap the window open
and shout her name—Suvi!
but I hesitate, and notice
the moon is still awake
at three in the afternoon.
She, too, is vain,
lingering in the daylight.
I find my brows in the glass,
narrow them like wings.

...

THE LAST SUNRISE

2009-09-20T08:46:00.003-06:00

Currently, the majority of my friends are scattered across the country, giving birth to healthy children, furthering their education and careers, or contributing to humanity's greater good. And I? Am sitting at home hypothesizing the circumstances of Satan's death in the mid-twentieth century. And later, I might vacuum the house. But that's about as productive as I get.

Something seems off.

THE LAST SUNRISE

In 1949 the devil appeared in all his glory
with polished horns, scarlet skin, and an arrowhead tail
in the living room of Doris Henningduke.
It was a weepy November afternoon
in Bison, South Dakota, and the snow drifts
surrounding the Henningduke porch
crackled beneath a shell of freezing rain.
Doris sat in front of her busted television
watching the icicles thicken over the front window;
she let her mind grow quiet and the silence swell.
She had no husband to disturb her.
When the devil materialized behind the sofa
clasping his hands over her eyes
Doris wasn’t even aware of her muscles straining
until after she had flipped him head over hooves
onto the cheap coffee table,
where she promptly broke his elbows
and nailed the spike of one of her black pumps
through the center of his forehead.
The devil sputtered a bit, garbled
something about the last mind game
before he lost consciousness and died.
Doris realized the consequences of her actions
and did what any other woman would do,
she hissed a quick prayer of penitence to a God
that was, at that moment, straightening
in His throne, distracted, as if
he’d heard a pair of swallows in the attic.
She dragged the devil out the back door
and, melting a trail of steam across the yard,
propped him up beneath the naked pine
where she began patting snow against his body
until he chilled and the snow stuck to his skin.
If one didn’t look too closely, Doris thought,
he could pass for the snowman of a blind child.
The physical exertion calmed her, so much so
that she was strangely not hungry for supper.
She slumped against what used to be the devil.
The neighborhood didn’t seem to notice.
It was only four o’clock and the sun
hadn’t quite gone down. Only when she could
no longer recall a sunrise did Doris finally weep.

...

ANNE BOLEYN DOESN'T WANT OUR SYMPATHY

2009-09-15T06:22:00.002-06:00

Yesterday, as I sat at my desk grading essay prompts, I wondered if I could get my students to write poetry prompts as well. Too bad it might not fit into the basic composition classroom. Maybe sometime after midterms.

I wanted to write about a woman who'd been robbed. Anne Boleyn. She had her head taken away, for God's sake. Okay. What about this woman? What would she say if she came back? She wouldn't want our sympathy.

Sarah and I were chatting online as I simultaneously graded and composed this prompt. I told her the phrase "Anne Boleyn doesn't want our sympathy" popped into my head for some reason. (Is this from a movie? Why this phrase? Anyone?) Sarah told me it had potential. I was still picturing students writing prompts. I saw more poetry prompts in elementary schools in Alaska than I ever see at universities. A child would be able to write this poem easily.

Don't know if it achieved its potential for greatness, but here's what resulted from the prompt. A young student, Eleanor; her mum; and a hint of dead royalty.

ANNE BOLEYN DOESN’T WANT OUR SYMPATHY

Henry VIII’s life was a love story, Eleanor writes,
even though my mum thinks otherwise.
I wish he didn’t kill his wives. Of course,
he had so many of them, I think he ran out of places
to keep them, which is surprising because
kings live in castles with ample storage.
My mum works at the university and says
she knows more about Henry than Henry did,
but she doesn't sounnd happy about it.
When I ask her what Anne Boleyn looked like
she feels better, in a sleepy way,
like she knew Anne and liked her more than Henry.
She says Anne was the most beautiful queen
since Cleopatra, she had brown hair just like ours
and hundreds of dresses, all in a different shade of red.
My mum tells me one or two things like this
(one day she said Anne had a magic pearl necklace
that she used to hypnotize men with full bellies,
another time she said Anne loved purple peonies)
but then she gets mad again and shakes her head
like she’s waking up from a strange dream.
She says Henry put a lot of strong women in the ground.
When I tell her we should bring peonies
to Anne’s grave my mum says
Anne Boleyn doesn’t want our sympathy.
She says Anne would much rather have her head back
so she could run away with a pack of hunters
like she wanted to so long ago, before the court,
before her first piece of jewelry, before she learned
to count how old she was on one hand.

...

OLD, BRILLIANT POET

2009-09-05T09:23:00.000-06:00

OLD, BRILLIANT POET

Becky is an old, brilliant poet and she says I shouldn’t worry.
My concern is valid, she says, every writer foresees
their last great idea. She sits on her porch swing
with a white quilt spread over her lap. It’s October
but the chill is friendly enough, she says,
still more like autumn than winter. I hate the fall, I tell her,
it makes me feel fat, the way I dream about baking
and bread recipes instead of inspiration and book lists.
Becky is resting this afternoon because she has been asked
to translate a Chekhov piece for Norton
and she is a genius when it comes to pacing herself.
She asks if it will make me feel better, to know
she once spent eight hours writing in a Parisian café
and when she brought her notebook home afterward
all she had written was walnut, Caliban, and lightning.
It makes me feel better. Becky reaches forward like Crazy Horse
and points down the road, a thick gold road made of packed sand
that seems to shoot for miles straight from her stained glass door,
and I follow her finger. The postman is coming, she says.
I had assumed, for that crumb of time between
the lifting of her hand and those words leaving her lips,
she had seen something new in the hedge, a new species of bird
perhaps, but Becky’s face is solemn, almost sad.
On the horizon, a bead of dust is erupting, soft brown globe
carrying a white truck from the city.

...

SHOWERED IN STARS

2009-08-17T13:00:00.001-06:00

Hi everyone!

Here's a new poem from the other day...went through a bit of a dry spell during the past two weeks and didn't get much out of it. Thought I needed to post something though!

Hey, could you guys let me know who (if you can narrow it down...or come up with one at all) your favorite poet is? I'm putting together a small project for my English 1101 class. I'd be much obliged.

Thanks!

SHOWERED IN STARS

Erin says sometimes she wonders what it might be like
to be showered in stars. She says her yoga instructor told her
to imagine stars falling on her skin the other night.
I’d like to think it feels a little like being rained on
except prettier, but I remember the stars are like planets—
huge, hot, cold, old enough to be characters in stories.
Wanting to feel one land on your skin would be like
asking to wear a tornado or spread the moon on a cracker.
Erin’s dedicated to her practice though, her yoga.
I’m not surprised to see her sitting on the hood of my Subaru
hugging her knees, staring up the sky
like it’ll just be a minute before she understands.
I’m staring at her forehead thinking, rain! it’s like rain!
because at first I think she might be one of those types
who receives telepathic thoughts, but after a while
I realize she’s not, she’s just waiting for a sign.
We can’t even see stars from here. We live in the city.

...

BETTING CHERYL

2009-07-27T10:57:00.000-06:00

Perhaps it might be better if I stopped reading these selections of C.S. Lewis writing from the point of view of a devil. They're entirely too good. Good like cake! (I only wish these margins were wider.)

BETTING CHERYL
“Satan, the leader or dictator of devils, is the opposite, not of God, but of Michael.” C.S. Lewis

He said he’d see my fatted calf and raise me one vase filled with coconut oil.
I knew which vase he referred to. He hadn’t used it since the first magician died.
You giggled the words: I swear, I’m a virgin! and I told you to shut it, Cheryl,
this no longer concerned you, though everyone at the table knew very well it did.
He wasn’t bluffing. His wife, at least I think she’s his wife, smiled at him
and he cut thoughtfully into his salmon filet. If he’d been bluffing
he would’ve ordered steak like that time he told me no one ever dies.
This wife of his had her larynx removed when she was just a girl. I heard it was voluntary.
She smiles a lot and it freaks me out. Oh, honey, you said, I love coconut oil!
I wanted to throw you in the river with your wrists tied to your ankles,
but you’d never have your larynx removed on purpose which means your vanity is intact.
It only prolongs your loss to bet higher, he said, swallowing.
He ate the parsley too. What’s sick is how he grinned at you the whole time,
like he was trying to imagine what was in your purse, like he already knew.
But I do know, he said, laughing. He laughs like a mule and gambles like one too.
I didn’t even see a waitress but I yelled for more water. This was getting old.
I raised him again, this time betting all the blue in your eyes. You gaped at his wife
and said, isn’t that sweet! but I ignored you, offered to blow it gently from your head
right then and there, like dust off a fishbowl.

...

QUEEN

2009-07-23T18:16:00.000-06:00

Here, have another poem that's still kinda rough around the edges, particularly in the title department. And would you please comment?

QUEEN

I was reading comfortably until the queen in my book
asked me plainly if I could hear her well enough.
She had just lost a child. It was Rome before Caesar
and she lived in a thick stone palace built up
behind the scabby hillsides rising out of the Mediterranean.
Death snuck in like an ivy tendril and took her baby boy
the way a flower takes water—that’s how she described it.

I didn’t answer her question, but I paused briefly
before going on reading. She went back to tending her fire,
a task meant for servants but she took great pleasure in it,
jabbing the black logs with an ugly bronze sword
whose tip scraped raw white lines in the soot.
She stopped once more and asked how I came to understand her,
did I speak Latin? Her voice was heating up

and I couldn’t tell if she would weep or fling a cinder at me.
I clenched the piece of yarn I used to mark my place.
My little grey cat looked down from the study window, anxious.
But the queen seemed to lose her concentration again
and started a lovely meditation on laurel groves.
I shut the book gently and put my feet down in the shallow river
swirling through my house—a choice I’d made over traditional carpet.

It’s only knee deep from the study to my bedroom.
My cat jumps easily from sill to sill to nightstand,
and we curl up in bed like pearls on the oyster’s tongue.
The cat falls asleep quickly, it’s as good as waking for her,
but I watch flying fish jump over my dresser for hours.
The doves outside my window are relentless with their cooing,
always asking to be let in, always wanting to drink.

...

WHAT'S SPECIAL ABOUT MILK

2009-07-16T14:38:00.000-06:00

First of all, I'd like to make a wee clarification. I recently discovered that my husband was discussing with the wonderful Peter Sears, bless their little hearts, all of my faults as a poet. Apparently they agree that I am too careless when it comes to letting others see my work; I don't let things simmer long enough.

Well, while it was heartening to hear that Tom discussed these things at all, I automatically became defensive. (This story has no moral. I'm still defensive.) No, I don't keep work to myself often. I obey basic copyright limitations when I'm published, but other than that, I'm usually more than happy to hand poems out and wait for a quickie critique. Not that I need to know. Not that I need assurance. But I do truly enjoy hearing other people react to my work. (Don't we all? Most writers--yes, only most--write to be read.) It keeps me thinking. And it makes my engine run. My poems aren't really few and far between, so I guess I'm not as protective as Tom and Peter think I ought to be.

That being said, I wanted to clarify that this blog is a posting of rough drafts on purpose. I put poems up, typically, within 24 hours of writing them. Sometimes they change drastically with time. (Once it's written, people, it's simmering, all right? We all exist in time, so technically everything I do is simmering.) Sometimes only mechanics change. And, sometimes, I abandon them in my computer files once I see that they aren't the effective ideas I thought they were.

This poem was composed last night. And we'll see in a week or so whether I like it!

WHAT’S SPECIAL ABOUT MILK

Say I meet the woman who runs the chocolate shop
out on the edge of the York countryside.
Say I ask her to tell me the recipe for a certain truffle
and she knows exactly how its liquor center is made
because the man who brought the rum from the belly of the barge
whose name is Patrick used to be her lover.
Say mentioning rum reminds her how she used to fall asleep
in Patrick’s arms down in the cellar while he told her stories
about Jamaican sunsets and suddenly she’s blushing
because her words are red as raspberries and she waves her left hand
like she’s swatting a familiar, beautiful bug away
and tells me certain truffles, like rum delivery men, just come to be.
Say she tells me this old brick building
used to be a hat shop and I can call her Hattie if I want.
Say my right hand is resting on a chilled glass case then
and I rub with my thumb the old bronze latch there,
straighten my spine, and introduce myself as Eliza Doolittle
because I know it doesn’t matter who I am here
and hats make me think it might have been fun to see the horse races
with a big bowl of birds and tulle and ribbon
pinned to the top of my head like Audrey Hepburn.
Say the chocolate shop woman isn’t thinking of hats at all
but of the building, the bricks, the waxy banister that swirls down
the staircase behind the giant silver mixer, down to the cellar
she used to sleep in so often, where the great refrigerator stands
over a cool concrete floor smooth as a bone.
Say it gets her thinking about those terrible French women
who make a big deal about chocolate among other things like sailors and rum
when all a true truffle maker needs to know is well-tempered milk.
Say she starts chanting m-i-l-k, milk, milk, milk, under her breath
right there behind the counter like she’s found an old rhythm
and she’s about to jump rope around it.
Say she nearly forgets I am there but because I ask
what’s so special about milk, she comes down
from her chocolate Jamaican heaven full of raspberries and Patrick
like a woman in a bottle being poured out in a white river,
and say she gets so sad waking up that fast she imagines
I am crying too and tells me, well, Miss Doolittle,
the angrier the cow the spicier the milk and the quicker
the chocolate is lost to an early curdle, and women like us
with our watering eyes couldn’t handle another loss like that.

...

BABY WITH MEXICO

2009-07-05T20:45:00.000-06:00

Lish was talking about how Mexico is a hard dame to break up with, how she's so difficult, with her roosters and dogs and loud cars, then she sweeps you off your feet with horseback rides and beauty and good food. So I asked Lish what she thought her baby would look like if Mexico got her pregnant. It got me thinking. I read somewhere, the other day, that the French surrealists used a sense of imagination that was "dizzying" and were therefore allowed to write nearly anything they wanted, that it provided them with a sense of literary freedom that hasn't been seen since. Clearly, they're great role models, but also serve as springboards into the nutty. Obsoive.

LETTERS FROM A FRIEND IN MEXICO

Mexico is the kind of lover who breaks your arm
before crushing you on the bedspread, she writes.
She simplifies: Mexico is a talented woman
in a boring brown dress and strips of old leather
criss-crossed around her ankles. Mexico is a ruler
who knows how to torment, who spits pepper
into the throats of roosters and carries like a ring bearer
their wild barking through window latches and keyholes,
who rolls the tire that propels the car that shuttles the boy
that holds the pistol that shoots a silver lasso around a pack of dogs.
She writes to say that Mexico has gotten the entire group
of women she travels with pregnant. That Mexico wants
to be a good husband but the children have come out
part donkey foal, part dove, part tomato vine, part waterfall.
They don’t live long, she writes.
They eat grass, sing, stretch, and dissolve. Her last letter
says she’s been told the only way to get home with her sanity
is to hop from rooftop to rooftop on the back of a trusted farm horse.
A merchant tells her so. He says he hears women escaping at night,
clattering across shingles, above the roosters and cars and dogs.
He says he’s caught them looking down on Mexico
as she calls up to them, promising things—
rivers, limes, rest—but the women in the sky can see
Mexico telling lies about her pockets full of sand.

...

I SLEPT WITH THOREAU

2009-06-10T07:13:00.000-06:00

Disclaimer: I didn't actually sleep with a dead guy. However, I just finished reading Amy Belding Brown's book, a speculation on the life of Lydia Jackson Emerson, and, for the first time, I had to remember that RW Emerson, Thoreau, Margaret Fuller and Louisa Alcott were all living human beings. I wanted to write about it. And what happens? Apparently, I get frisky with the outdoorsy one.

I've been writing more frequently lately, and I think it's because a) I'm no longer working at the clinic, b) I'm preparing for my last residency, c) my thesis is already bound and ready to be presented, and d) all I really do in my spare time is read and lift weights. Plenty of time to think.

Anyway, this poem is probably (ironically) the most suited to be posted on my blog. The others are under construction and/or not very impressive. Thanks for reading.

I SLEPT WITH THOREAU

It’s true,
I followed a trail of fish scales
to his cabin, followed them
as if they had been pennies
or bread crumbs. He stood alone
on a patch of grass lifting
two small trees (one in each fist)
over his head like dumbbells—
Baby maples, he said.
He had cleaned his teeth with straw.
He had scrubbed his skin with sand.
He said he had something to show me,
wanted to read a short passage
of poetry as I undressed.
I waited patiently by the fire,
crossing and uncrossing my legs.
He stumbled on his own words
and eventually read a page from
the story of Ulysses. He said he wished
he could write the colors gold and red.
The book trembled in his hand,
stubble blossomed on his face
and he asked if I would like some raspberries.
He was an exasperating, nervous young man
and my voice went flat as water
when I said Hank, I don’t make trips like this
every day, now shake those little birds
from your hair and get into bed.

...

ONE MAN DREAMS OF MARRIAGE

2009-05-31T20:14:00.000-06:00

Hey, quick question, before I post this poem. (Note: question is not related to this poem, but to another.) In your esteemed literary opinion (I believe every literate person has one), how do you feel about publishing work that is clearly inspired by someone you know (someone who may read the work) but is not necessarily the subject of said work? I'm still on the edge, and I'd like your thoughts. On one hand, it may not be a good idea to publish something referencing another person when you can't be there to say, "don't worry, you were just the inspiration; it's not really ABOUT you." Then again, what does it matter? Your creative work is your own, in the beginning and end. And I'm not talking about the clearly offensive stuff either, just subtle qualities you may pick up from your friends and throw in on one of your characters. I know this is often something non-fiction writers struggle with as they lay out their memoirs. But poetry, for me, has become a fantastical sort of truth/fiction hybrid. I seem to have all the strings in my hands. I'm curious to know what you consider "allowed". You can message me on facebook to let me know what you think, too.

This all being said, I'd like to post another poem. (Unfortunately, its format doesn't mesh with this blog download, so it's just living in triplets for now.) I wrote it on the floor in the transportation section of Barnes & Noble while waiting for Tom's flight to land. I'd just taught a lesson that spent some time discussing the relevance of memory to poetry writing, why it is sometimes vital, and why, sometimes, it can be damaging. Richard Hugo believes it's typically better to know less about a place before you recreate it in your writing. But don't a ton of authors suggest you "write what you know"?

Apparently, today, I'm all about hearing both sides. Thanks for your input.

ONE MAN DREAMS OF MARRIAGE

As a young man I dreamt
of biting into stacks of leaves
piled high like sandwiches.

It was just a dream.
My sister actually did it.
She spat out a caterpillar,

halved, oozing,
before I fainted.
My mother thought

I’d been shot when
she found me, my sister
crying by my side

with guts on her chin.
When I was old enough to marry
there were all sorts

of sandwiches at the wedding.
Cucumbers on wheat crackers,
parsley in sour cream on toast,

giant tomatoes cut into slabs
over mozzarella fans.
I ate until I stumbled,

in the yard with the swans
and paper lanterns.
My bride, the most

reliable woman in town—
they said her tongue could
do everything except

sound out the s in sorry—
she picked a mint leaf
from her drink and shook it,

two drops of tonic on her cheek,
she kneeled and told me
to open up.

...

TAKING JUSTICE HOME

2009-05-17T13:56:00.001-06:00

...why did I write this while sitting out in the woods? You'd think I would have written one of those aw-gee-nature poems. But no. Here's Esther. I look forward to your feedback!

TAKING JUSTICE HOME

Some day soon I will go back
to that park in Vancouver where
Esther lives comfortably inside
the curve of an old concrete sewer pipe.
She introduced herself as Esther, once,
but I dreamt the night before
I would meet the concept of justice
in vagrant form, so I take everything
Esther does literally and want to know
why she insists upon carrying
a chopping knife tied to the inside
of her shabby cotton jacket.
Justice needs no weapon, in my opinion,
but Esther says she must be prepared
to do battle with Christ when the day
comes because she has lived
a nasty, blackened sort of life
and she refuses, as every lady should,
to go to hell willingly. She is also afraid
of rapists and jazz musicians
who might wander off the beaten path
one night after a performance thick with pills.
Esther used to be married
and her teeth are worn down
from keeping the ring in her mouth
all these years, years she’s spent suffering
from nightmares and hallucinations
of an adorable brick house opening
its front door to swallow her with
the pop of a doorbell. Esther is justice
and she believes strongly in sleeping
beneath a hanging bouquet of skunk cabbage
to ward off drunk artists. Some day soon
I will go back to fetch Esther, before
the sewer pipes are crushed and remodeled.
I’ll take her home like a box
of closed-eye kittens and feed her
nothing but honey and raw fish,
slip it under the bedroom door
with a stack of notebook paper
and my father’s lucky ballpoint pen.

...

AT THE TEMPLE OF POETRY

2009-05-03T17:50:00.000-06:00

Hi all!

Kitty Jospe and I had a good conversation the other day, chatting about our (sometimes forgotten) humble origins as poets. We bring our teensy nothings to poetry's altar and hope for some sort of success...praise, maybe? Truth? (Or is it beauty?) I wonder how strong a role pride plays in all this, in living as a writer. (As I write this, Garrison Keillor is quoting May Sarton: "One must think like a hero in order to behave like a merely decent human being." How fitting.)

I wrote this poem shortly after hanging up the phone. Truth be told, it doesn't read as philosophically as one might think. (read: you can enjoy it even if you're exhausted.)

AT THE TEMPLE OF POETRY

something in my pocket feels round
maybe a pearl or a silver bullet either way
I’m pretty sure it’s valuable and I’m taking it
to the temple of poetry where I can sacrifice freely
I expect a long queue but the place seems deserted
it’s a clay house it’s a marble slab it’s tucked away
in a snowy wood someone’s playing the piano
someone’s slapping horsehair on the snare drum’s face
someone’s hiding in the curtains someone’s running water
across the fat backs of fish something catches my eye
it’s a dodo toddering round the altar he’s got a piece
of paper pinned to his tail it says Hello My Name Is Normal
he starts lighting a flock of white candles he beckons
me forward I’ve got something in my pocket
he says so do all my brothers but bring it forward if you must
it’s round think it might be a pearl he says an Italian was here
just the other day and he brought a globe
the Frenchwoman brought a little orange pumpkin
they’re always perfect spheres he said
I reach in my pocket and pull out a pebble grayish and smooth
I’m frowning but Normal the dodo just turns back
to his candles says leave it in that stream over there
and yes there is a little creek running around the temple
it’s full and squibbling with other poets’ pebbles
there’s barnacles latched onto Normal’s knobby legs
he says I better stop gawking before there’s boom boom thunder
says I better get back to work if I ever want to return

...

EXIT NARCISSISM

2009-04-28T17:46:00.000-06:00

Another new poem for this month's writing assignment. Probably the first time I've written more than four poems in one month! ...I started ruminating on narcissism, when it peaks and when it collapses. I was also looking out my living room window, watching the goings-on.

EXIT NARCISSISM

it is just one minute after my fingernails
glow with the royalty of stars
and my hair grows thick with
the floating moons of Venus
when it arrives—a small fist

knocking the front door

it is just seconds after I picture my heart
a silk ribbon running through Calcutta
and my mind is melted down to ink
to stain the thumb of Shakespeare
when I put down my pen

and answer the door

let the hot air burst from my house
like a bleeding lion

it is the young girl I have seen sleeping
at the base of a stop sign
she’s holding a plastic
grocery bag open to me
inside are three limes, six bottles of beer

and a package of butter

she glances over her shoulder
like there might be a spider on her back
she begs me to buy everything
for just one dollar

...

WOLF ON YOUR BACK

2009-04-23T08:29:00.001-06:00

Well, now that Tara's on a blogging hiatus, I'm not sure if I'm going to get any feedback at all. (Where are you, Amy?) But I guess I'll keep posting poems for my own satisfaction. Talking to one's self has never hurt anyone. I suppose.
Writing has been a bit overwhelming lately. It isn't the usual dilemma I've been dealing with--I'm pretty sure I'm meant to teach/write and not go into veterinary science--but I'm having a hard time concentrating and getting all my proverbial ducks in a row. Graduation is looming. So is the presentation of my thesis. I need to arrange my travel plans. I'm eyeball-deep in manuscripts I need to read. The world seems to be crawling with an abundance of writers; at the same time, I'm feeling isolated and small. Where the hell did I leave my confidence? I used to keep a little baggie of it tucked away somewhere...
Here's a poem I wrote last night. The evening started out innocently enough; Tom and I were sitting on the back porch reading, listening to the Braves game, waiting for the sun to sink. Enjoy it, yes?

FOR OUR TENTH ANNIVERSARY I TIED A WOLF TO YOUR BACK

for our tenth anniversary I tied a wolf to your back
while it was sleeping. I tightened the bonds and mentioned
this wolf may have once been silver or bluish gray
before it made its life in the muck of the world.
we were in love. you were very patient
and when I finished the wolf was secured
his front paws perched on your shoulders.
you asked what I meant by it. why, I said,
this is to guarantee the coming of st. francis
whenever you might need him. he spoke to wolves, love,
he will speak to you. very thoughtful, you said,
pulling a small box from your coat pocket.
I opened it like it might be my last drink of water
but out came a single black ant, plump and vicious,
quick to bite, and as I sucked my finger you flicked the ant
back into its box and took my face between your hands.
love, you said, may you always know where to find food.
I knew then we would die together. the wolf began
to wake and was slobbering on your ear, faraway the voices
of frantic villagers rattled into the air. we turned
to face the forest and wait for our saint to arrive.

...

THE WAY MILDRED DIES

2009-04-18T12:02:00.000-06:00

I promise to write more soon. I recently printed my thesis and I think half my brain died with it. :) For now, here's a new poem.

THE WAY MILDRED DIES

she picks daisies one at a time
holds them up to her ear and
shakes them Listening for bells
like the head of a church opening its mouth
inside her forehead And what if
she’s gone deaf waiting to hear it?
she knows the world has slipped
away when she wakes in the same
field with a stone tablet hovering
over her chest. It doesn’t mean
she stops straining toward sound
but she has to resort to magic
she wrote me a letter from her
deathbed “I have friends below
the grass here.” It is the strangest thing
I’ve ever seen Ears sprouting up
on pale pink stems around her grave
their curves cupped in all directions

...