Improv 2, Week 4

Pimp Limp
--Adrian Matejka
For Flava Flav, circa 1993

On Flavor of Love, you crowed:
Your man Flava Flav's a pimp.
P-I-M-P! from the balcony.
A cascade of kiss and tell
on the woman walking in weaved
shame past the pool: head bowed,
bra tucked in armpit, heels clicking
maestro quick as early morning
sunbathers peeped upward
from behind sunglasses wondering
who disguised a lawn jockey
in a silk robe. It didn't have
to be this way. Fifteen years ago,
you took a jet-setting break once
a month to visit one of your girlfriends
in Bloomington. Me and my boys
hating on you before there was a name
for hateration. Before a football
player's overtures finally pried
that woman loose from you clocked
embrace. The time she cut you loose,
you came to town in a limousine
on a doughnut with a dented back
door. It was sunny, and you got
out of that limping car
with a matching limp to the applause
of me and my boys laughing.
You put your Gazelles on,
kissed two jeweled peace fingers
and tossed them to the crowd.

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Good Vibrations
Picture Brain Wilson’s sun blistered face when he heard: Strictly Hip-Hop boy, I ain't singin' this, bringing this to the entire nation. Black, white, red, brown. Feel the vibration. It was 91’ when Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch released Good Vibrations. We just discovered eyeliner and halter tops and how boys whistled to both—longing for summer in our hair and California tans. Magazines teased: tips for the bedroom, designer mini-skirts, convertibles we couldn’t drive. Remember Mike Eversole? In junior high his locker glimmered lip-glossed kisses. Each one an invitation, desired gossip, a secret admirer. For the Across the Nation dance, he smeared sunscreen on his nose, flowered his neck with gardenias, hit the floor in swim trunks. Check it, I’m a surfer. He bellowed of little black sands, glimmering like lips deposited only for him. We huddled in the corner, starched in grass skirts. His hands reached high and waved in our direction. But all we could do was stare, caught in the vibrations.

Free Entry 2, Week 4

Here, pasted to the eye of the moon, a mish-mash of postage stamps.
Duct tapped with saliva, glued with fingerprints, smelling of resistance:
What splendid travel marks the occasion. Landing your first belly flop

in a crater makes the moon accountable for redness. Craters bite,
like horseflies, in places you’ve never suspect. Moon beams stumble
over the finer points of light speed, two stepping jazz pigments

the tongue. Learn to fly, it will make breaking G-force easier:

1. Chalk a circle on the wall, preferably white, but yellow will do.
2. Walk for summer and the locust of lightning bugs.
3. Collect bugs in jars. Once enough are gathered dump bugs onto the
underside of shoebox lid and mash off their lights.
4. Smear lights in circle, dotting from center out.
5. Stand back and tell yourself you can’t fly, but neither can these bugs.

You will find a moon in your room more pleasant outdoors.
In Juno, Alaska light manifests in the mouths of whales.
Ones captured for aquariums generate tide changes.

I read that once on the back of a postage stamp.

Improv 1, Week 4

Wassily Kandinsky's Boxed-Up Voice
-Adrain Matejka

Here's
a Kandinsky print, wrapped in plastic bubbles

that didn't work. If Kadinsky wasn't
a carpetbagger, he should have bee. (lines 9-12)


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I am qualified for warning: which is to say my clichés
aren’t original. In New Mexico, they put warnings down
like rabid coyotes. Or like free-wheeling vagrants
with stacks of aces up their drunken car rides. Tuesday,
all ballpoint pen usage reduced carbon monoxide
emissions to dwarf-sized complaints. Almost as small
as keyholes. If the mayor of San Juan gave Georgia O'Keeffe
a key to the city would she key the town dealership? Call her vandalism
postage stamps? The gift of the forgotten is that they force remembrance.
Here’s a fake: Ram's Head White Hollyhock and Little Hills,
found at a truck stop. Also, here’s a shot glass with three cows
in a pick-up with a pig at the wheel, both collector’s items. One secondary color,
magenta, acts like packing material around my favorite day
of the week. I wouldn’t hock my teeth for all the coyotes
in the backseat of a Buick. Once the decorum of applause breaks
all that is left is the silver lining of ink well, inking grapefruit like tattoo.

Junkyard Quotes 1-5, Week 4

"Anatomy of an Exhibition"
-title of a webiste

"I have to go get mine."
-friend referring to picking up his dog.

"Stupid" Laws from across the country
New Mexico
Hunting is prohibited in Mountain View Cemetery.
Ohio
It is illegal to fish for whales on Sunday.
It is illegal to display colored chickens for sale.
It is illegal to walk a cow down Lake Road.

"Dumb" Labels found on products

Wearing of this garment does not enable you to fly.
Child-Sized Superman Costume

Warning: Never iron clothes on the body.
Rowenta Iron

This product not intended for use as a dental drill.
Dremel Electric Rotary Tool

"Most of my cliches aren’t original."

"Always go to other people’s funerals, otherwise they won’t come to yours."
-Yogi Bera

"If your parents never had children, chances are you won’t either."
-Dick Cavett

Free Entry, Week 4

Animal Fair
Not the elephants but the teeth creeping about the elephants,
that funnels out the Metropoltian Shores Zoo, clinking
down the park bench and into the coin slots of the boardwalk
aracade. Down the alley, raking the door of the Lucky Lou’s
nightclub, the teeth groan, streching like newborn fawns.
Ciggerette butts dint the ground, and some girl’s
rainbow-colored retainer nests in the O, of a fallen Open sign.
This is true:Thirty-four years remains the time it takes a mudflat to dry.
Not dry, but to churn like silver in the hands of a miser.
Not churn, but bubble like the sunburnt back of the boy
at the pinball machine. Other animals, or the teeth of other animals,
buck in the mouths of the guardian. Jowls puff
in unision with coins dripping into the hands of ticket-takers.
And all that echoes in the throats of puddles is the sound of a wet O.

Free Entry 2, Week 3

(Draft 2)
(formally The Clubhouse)

Over Dinner

Your mother hollered at us in thick German.
Dumplings for dinner and your Father, his cigar
smelling of straw, loaded the table.
Parakeets pestered us from the other room,
the dog licked my knees, you whispered
to your mother over the turnips about the stain

in your underpants. Macht nichts,
she gurgled, mouth full of dumplings, you’ll be
woman now. Your father forked another pea
as he quelled a cough, your mother carried on:
My Mutter stuck my panties to pole and put in yard

for whole village to see that I was woman.
Her broken English reminded me of that day
in your clubhouse. We both worn yellow jumpers,
I sported a ribbon, sliding down my braids.
You pounded a nail into the roof and etched:
I druved this here. When I told you druved

should be drove you hurled my doll across the room
and pelted me with calm insults. So, today
at the table when your father jabbed his napkin
in his glass and dabbed his wrinkled, sweating
brow, you smashed a turnip with your fist
just to force him to speak. But there was nothing.
Not even a stop or not at the table or please, the guest.

Later, that night we climbed once again
into your clubhouse and then holding hands,
we began to recite: Lord, grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change… Serenity,
which in German I heard means ailment.

Free Entry 1, Week 3

At 12:54 I harness the winds of last
Tuesday. As they scrape the sky and etch
grooves into my scalp like lace
corseting a shoe, I remember a simple fact:
You look nothing like the map of
the town. Nor should you. You are not
portable by any means. I wonder when
terrain becomes terrain? When we have
treaded it enough? Even the marble moon
wanes in its arduous nobility. Collects a value
of movement however depleting. Enacts trickery
or a guise of omnipotence, where as are you
just sit or fake a rare slug. Now I know why
coyotes bawl at their own reflections
in those lucid gullies of last season’s rain.
They yelp and hurl sounds of stillness,
their trapped image, rippling within
a hedge of water. Fear springs
from animals ensnared in static. Any being
pumped with instinct would eat itself whole
before squandering its own legs to flatness.

Strategy Response, Week 3

After reading Matejka’s collection this week I became very interested in his use of the modern colloquial. This element is seen in just about every poem in the collection and conveys the poet’s interest in origins and etymologies (like most poets). I always feel like I have a difficult time introducing “everyday speak,” song lyrics, or modern pop figures into my poetry for an odd fear of sounding hokey or not pulling it off successfully—sounding too commercial, maybe? In “America’s First And Foremost Black Superstar,” Matejka uses: jive-ass, this ain’t no shakedown, em’, dig it, Marvel comics, Iron Fist, etc. I would like to try my hand at similar subject matter and pick a pop icon, song, or movie and write with that particular subject as a filter. The poem “Pimp Limp” is a great example of using a modern television show, considered by some as a flash-in-the-pan reality show—Flavor of Love, and used it as a filter for poetry. I suppose I always considered it a personal taboo to rely on pop culture for my writing, yet I feel this stems from not being able to successfully merge it into a draft. I would like to give myself an exercise this week for my free entry and pick a subject or figure from popular culture and write a draft utilizing some of Matejka’s turns. For example, using song lyrics as introduction like in “Domo Arigato, Mr. Mulatto [Dub Style]” would be interesting to try on my own. The lyrics act as a guide for the poems that follow, sometimes creating an odd juxtaposition or engaging in recursivity. I hope to achieve something as engaging as Matejka’s use of pop culture.

Improv 2, Week 3

Flight Reflex
--Adrian Matejka

It must be winter in this part of Texas
because the grackles are posse-d up.
They toupee rooftops and wires.
They ornament trees and anything
else with room and resilience
for break and claw. Anything
that doesn't move much.

And always, that damn epistle
of chalk and fingernail.

And always,
grackles signify the need for unity
in Texas, whether bird, black, or both.

It must be winter because it feels
like spring and the man-sized bugs
have split for wherever bugs go
because of the grackles.
Like urban flight, only not, and the trees
naturally crooked for hanging
hang just a little lower, their leaves
chilling in the surplus cusp of winter.

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It must be summer in this part of Russia
because all the boars are hoof up.
They mull about the trellis and hollyhock,
hogging the smell good smells, and eating
chocolate wrappers that orphans left
under the churchyard slide.

Some wrappers have English printed across them.

Those orphans always climb the boars'
backs, when enough can be gathered to qualify a team,
the customary four for polo.

And never,do the backs of the boar perspire
or need a coat of oil in Russia, never, not even in the threat of a fry.

It can't be summer, the orphans still don knee socks,
to cover bruised knee caps from falling on winter's ice.
One boy says it feels like the northern lights
haven't flown across his eyes in eons. And one girl,
says the only time to saw fire it was just a cow
rolled in oil. Like the manic need to pick
flowers, the kind that tell the future,
the boars will always roast in the summer
days, squealing like a child falling on his knees.

Junkyard Quotes 1-5, Week 3

"Medium rare means there is still blood in it."
-a three-year-old asking me how I like my steak cooked

"There's a tornado but we don't have any T.V.s."
-a friend commenting on a recent storm

"Yes, but twenty-nine is the opposite of dead."
--me commenting a friend's 29th birthday

"The kind of people who read Truman Capote are the kind of people who would never own anything that could be considered a knick-knack."
--online commentary from random website

"This really is the best costume for the day."
--Edith Beale

Improv 1, Week 3

passage from:

Seven Days of Falling
--Adrian Matejka

Today, I'm assimilating like margarine
into hotcakes. I'm getting down

like Danny LaRusso after the against-
the-rules leg sweep. So low,

I'll be a flower in common decency's
lapel. Factual, the same way "Zanzibar"

means sea of blacks to anyone who isn't
from there.

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Today, I'm unwinding like the hem
of your favorite sweater. I'm forgetting

you don't care, like when your mother plowed
into the mailbox with her rusty Plymouth.

I'm tired of flagging you down, reminding
you that birdseed does not belong in crumpets.

What would your mother say, god rest her soul,
if she knew you always wear red on Sundays?

The best jackknife I ever witnessed
was on I-85: hundreds of chickens skidded

the pavement, traffic jammed for miles.
A friend of mine, Nadine, (you remember her

right?) was flying into Atlanta and saw the whole
mess from the air. She likened the affair to a pillow-

factory combusting, a mushroom cloud of feathers.
I embroidered a pillow once with the inscription:

Please wipe your feet here. I sold a set of twelve
to the local Red Cross, although I thought best

that the pillows belonged in Cracker Barrel
gift shops. Tomorrow I will tighten the bolts

of my four speed Huffy and comb the streamers
with my fingers. Maybe I will scrap the bike

for your birthday and we will become lone walkers
together. Pedaling up hill is rough

on my ulcer anyway. They say George Hincapie once biked
from Portugal to Austria in three days,

he said it was so easy it was like pedaling
in your sleep. You, however, were never one for travel.

Improv 2, Week 2

passage from Larkin's "Aubade"

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what's really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying and being dead.
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.


---------------------------------------------------------------------

I get half-drunk all day, and work all night.
Moaning at the endless verge of carpet
at my feet. I fix my hand atop the circle
of the glass, harboring the weeping ice
and mimic the sound of the canaries
as they lung out the unresting of men.
There is nothing here: no Spanish Citadel,
or Maypole--half expecting a rain, half expecting
to just run out of ribbon, as it foxes in and out.
Erecting ritual only forget the last one performed.

When the day turns into a balance of plates,
I find no interest in the feral interrogation of porcelain.
To peck at the tiniest scratch on the teacup is to foster
a loin-sized roar in decorum. Fingers are the loudest
of all predators. The grooves of pennies claim
the fingerprints of every child. To know the real
killer is to steal the copper of school yard games.

Strategy Response, Week 2

From this week’s reading in Writing Poetry I observed Eric Elshtain’s piece, “Early Maneuvers, Closing Matters.” I become extremely interested in this particular poem because of the expanse of linguistic play, and I even used this poem in am improv exercise. I what found most beneficial to reading and experimenting with this poem am what Writing Poetry dubbed, “building linguistic muscle.” Elshtain’s poem appears to be mainly concerned with creating a collection of fresh, unexpected, and defamililaizing images and phrases. What was valuable in using Elshtain’s poem for improv is that it helped me stay away from wanting to “create a story,” (which as we discussed in class this past Wednesday—aiming for an arch or story can sometimes hinder linguistic play). The improv from class in which we took a line from a Bruce Bond poem was oddly very hard for me to generate a page of writing, and when I went back and reviewed what I had written, I was frustrated to see that I had some kind of narrative stream at play. The imagery or fresh phraseology that should have come as a result of the exercise was lacking if borderline non-existent. I did not intend to develop a loose narrative, but unconsciously one seemed to unfold. Now, looping back to the Elshtain piece as base for improve I was feel I was able to generate a greater amount of usable phrases for future drafts. Why I had less trouble with Elshtain over Bond I do not know specifically—perhaps it was reading the whole poem several times and getting a feel for the syntax and flow of linguistics. What I really want to continue with as an exercise for manufacturing new words, phrases, signs, is Elshtain’s ability to play with sound and sense, while at the same time changing around syntax to develop freshness—nouns to verbs, verbs to nouns, the odd command, alternate realities, etc. By feigning to make sense and playing with syntax I was able to generate some useable phrases: without eyeballs the night means alabaster, you’d crawl slower if it wasn’t for the telegraph, our thumbnails only interact on a plane of compulsion, extend not only to slippers, but to crutches, which procreate in the winter months, etc. With these phrases I can already see that I have some common thread of handicap, the bodily, perhaps even lust in a strange way. Observing Elshtain’s linguistic techniques and imitating them for my own junkyard phrases I find to be immensely helpful in blocking out the “pre-established grid” of poetry.

Free Entry 2, Week 2

As it happened, I forgot to pack the buttons

tight around the neck of your little cold.

An unmothering effect swept the forgotten

gesture like an earthquake before it turns

into view. I crane my fingers to the flu

of your throat, thick with honey and lemon,

that slugs down the canals of every cough

and whimper. If only after this time I quit

wasting the tissues on the stray spider or drop

of coffee, we might not run out so quick.

The television wrecks the hush of the room,

though we manage well in discarding its presence.

Among the great many distractions I find that

the robin tousling leaves about with its beak,

Just outside the window, to register higher

on the Richter scale of annoyance, a shatterstar.

Since that night we slept, window cracked so as

to hear the stars’ timpani crash the Milky Way, the cleft

in your chin has not been quite the same. In fact,

I find it simply marvelous how it is no longer even there.

Free Entry 1, Week 2

For one of my free entries this week I wanted to try out an exercise of taking an established poem and replacing all the nouns with my own. The outcome produced only a few new phrases that I would put in my junkyard for possible use.

Kind of Blue
--Angie Estes

So the universe is not blue
after all, not even green

but beige because the stars are
older than we thought. But is it

sad, even sadder than
we knew? Describe the sound

of doves—is it coo coo
coo or who who who? The French

would say it’s rue rue rue
and in Italy it would be summer,

morning, already brocade,
Cecilia Bartoli gargling, And the throats

of doves, are they beautiful
or true in their blue and pink

embroidery? Young stars burn
hot and blue but those near death

are red. Did your father believe
in God? and the deer leaped

so high above the road I believed
it had been hit by a car. Dear falling

note, intention, dear
no more, dear rain,

give it up. What remains and need
not be mentioned we’ll call

what have you, muscia ficta: not
what’s written down but what’s

been played. What if
you paused for a minuet

instead of a minute? The dark
might sky, the blue might

Star, the always
could open, the close

might earth. The doves
are just around

the corner, like a train
before it turns into

view. Miles Davis was
right: there will be fewer

chords but infinite possibilities
as to what to do with them. The doves

are coming, true
true, true.

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So the teaspoon is not lost
after all, not even stumbled upon

but hidden because the eyes are
older than we thought. But is it

sad, even sadder than
we knew? Describe the beard

of the drifter —is it hum hum
hum or blues blues blues? The time clock

would say it’s tic tic tock
and in Chernobyl it would be heart-shaped,

liquid, already chewy with neglect,
Victoria Woodhull gargling. And the feelers

of worms, are they beautiful
or true in their stench and mucus

membrane? Young scars burn
hot and blue but those near

are pewter. Did your moon believe
in snoring? and the mice leaped

so high above the windowsill I believed
they had been hit by a blade of light. Dear opal

nightingale, intention, dear soot craven
brick, dear let it all hang out,

give it up. What remains and need
not be mentioned we’ll call

what have you, brass compass: not
what’s written down but what’s

been played. What if
you paused for a marigold

instead of a stop sign? The village
might stalk, the drinking well might

forgive, the always
could open, the gravel

might hunger. The blue coral
are just around

the tip of limestone, like an earthquake
before it turns into

view. Humphrey Bogart was
right: If that plane leaves the ground

and you're not with him, you'll regret it.
Maybe not today.Maybe not tomorrow. The veterans

are coming, true
true true.

Improv 1, Week 2

Early Maneuver, Closing Matters
--Eric Elshtain

In the next face you make a thought
out of near. You use language
to ignore collapsing. Our footprints
are the same in the fourth moment
of the gallop. Call family the same thing
in real time proper for moral concern.
Become the cinema of results. Disarticulate
the arm inflecting to the left
the gathered there. Title it Gerund
Somebody. Point the commotioon
last of which has not been screened;
only instants. Stints at the ready,
stories at the eyes away to the reason
to find another father for the man whose fingers
frame the air: he's a plastic sidewalk.
What he thought occurred, so we all sing
about meeting ourselves.
Wave. Open the hatch is a horizon to care for
without telescopes. We cannot shadow the look
addictable to origin. This scriptless
will be about subsidence. It will become
the centerpiece of a belief.
You have every reason-you're
making yourself in a reality unmaking.

-------------------------------------------

In the next face you make a thought
out of trumpets. You use language
to elevate end tables. Noses long
for teacups to sniff. Call me what
you will, but I will call myself melon.
our thumbnails only interact on a plane
of compulsion. Dub the snail as a distant
species that only partakes in smelting.
Birth a diamond, eat a mine, but only if
dirt walks. Paint a picture, call it:
Filing Nails and mount it in your parlor.
Extend not only to slippers, but to crutches,
which procreate in the winter months.
Flies at the track abhor the ready, set, go!
Ask your brother to find another dolphin
more your size, insist it come form Gibraltar,
so I can flog the creature accordingly. Flinch.
Cast glances in the minimal directions for
without eyeballs the night means alabaster.
I cannot collect you for all the scars caring
for their own smiles. Tatterless we comb
the text for that bit of yellow pulsing with glass.
It will become the caliber of music, a curtain
for split hairs. You fashion every reason out of lice
—you’d crawl slower if it wasn’t for the telegraph.

Junkyard Quotes 1-5, Week 2

"[...]like a mannequin made of flesh, flesh all the way through."
Denis Johnson, Jesus' Son

"The men moved supperward."
William Faulkner, A Light in August

"The mysterious stranger's name, incidentally, is Satan."
footnote in Narrative Design

"chewy with neglect."
from week 2 free entry exercise

Dear opal nightingale, dear soot craven brick, dear let it all hang out"
from week 2 free entry exercise

"like an earthquake before it turns into view"
from week 2 free entry exercise

The village might stalk, the drinking well might forgive, the gravel might hunger."
from week 2 free entry exercise

Strategy Response, Week 1

One element of Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz” that I would like to mimic in my own poetry is his tight structure and internal rhyme that he plays with through out the piece. Notably, for me, in the second stanza I began to notice a dedication to the vowel o and the connection it makes from line to line. There is romped, from, and mother in what I would call the first grouping, and then countenance, could, and unfrown in what I would the second grouping of “o-play.” The romp, from, and mother all posses the ‘om,’ even though in mother it is reversed. The sounds of these words all internally harmonize with each other and create a great formally structural component. The next group of words: countenance, could, and unfrown, all contain an ‘ou’ and the ‘ow’ in unfrown mimics the same sound. To take a basic look at the second stanza, it is visually pleasing on the page. Also, upon reading the stanza out loud, after taken a studious note of the vowel play, I can hear how Roethke keeps the poem compact and voids the arbitrary. This would be a move I would want to incorporate in my own writing to create a connecting thread from stanza to stanza. Something I would also like to develop this semester is paying better attention to scansion (of other poets as well as my own) and building a better reading voice to present my own poems in a public arena. I feel that “My Papa’s Waltz” would be beneficial for me to scan and learn to recognize the natural rhythm of the poem. By doing this on a regular basis with poems I will better able to construct it into my own drafts and establish a stronger, and less arbitrary, poetic composition. Lastly, one other element of this poem that I would like to integrate into my own work is what I would call a “misplacing” (or maybe even “poetic projecting”?) in which Roethke has the speaker project the action from himself onto another person/place/thing. Example: “My right ear scraped a buckle.” Instead of the buckle scraping the speaker, it specifically scraped his ear. I like this particular move because it helps deflect from the autobiographical and helps the poet remain personally detached from his work or poetic narrative. If following the more violent interpretations of this poem, some argue the father’s [belt] buckle was used to physically harm the speaker. Whether or not that is true to the narrative, Roethke’s own life, or his intend for the interpretation for the line, the “misplacing” does remain a tool that I want to utilize for my own writing.

Free Entry 2, Week 1

To My Brain,

In lieu of crabgrass, that ices over the chipped wood
that is meant scare off fleas, you might consider daisies,
they are my favorite. But you already know that after all.
Maybe you could even replace the girl at the end
of the sidewalk, in fact I would like it very much if she
were not there at all. Instead, at the end of sidewalk,
just were the first blades begin, could you
orchestrate a Halloween, the one when
it snowed? I think I was a Can-Can that year,
donning some mauve Goodwill number. All the walking
ruined my boots, all through that wet, hard snow.
Or how about that time I smacked my palm down
atop the kerosene heater? Bring back the swelter,
sticky skin, the yowling that brought my parents in.
Hell, you could even roll out the grass, on over the girl,
and I could walk forever, until my legs give out. My body
would welcome the stretching. You can file this under:
My Feet on Grass or Days I Can’t Want to Remember.
Just like my first step, you can loose this one too.
Put this march somewhere in with logarithms, metric
Units, and the first pangs of cutting my gums. I read
just yesterday that if you eat a petal of Bindweed
you can forget the first nine years of your life. Maybe,
I just need more air. Creeping Charlie, the weed eaten
for good luck on a first marriage, recommends two years
of frowning before ingestion. I wonder if this works
or if it’s really just a figment of the imagination.

Free Entry 1, Week 1

In the roof of your clubhouse rests a nail.
Etched next to the rusty spot is your testimony:
I druved this here. When I told you druved
should be drove you kicked paint on my shoe
and pelted me with calm insults. I reminded you
of your fear of bees and how quickly I was no
longer Fat! or Dumbo, your favorite double jab.
Thank god there was a bee whirling about, next
to your head, and I to swat it with flat hand.
Your mother hollered at us in thick German.
Dumplings for dinner and your Father, his cigar
laced with a perfume of straw, loaded the table.
Parakeets pestered us from the other room,
the dog licked my knees , you whispered
to your mother over the turnips about the stain
you found in your underpants. “Macht nichts,”
she gurled, mouth full of dumplings,” you’ll be
woman now.” Your father forked another pea
as he quelled a cough. “My Mutter once stuck
panties to pole and put in yard for whole village
to see that I grewed into woman’s time.” We nodded,
eyes centered on our dinner plates,quite as stone.
Later, that night as we laid in bed holding hands ,
the cat coiled at our feet, we began to recite
the Serenity Prayer: “Lord, grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change…” Serenity,
which I heard in German actually means ailment.

Improv 1, Week 1

Affirmative Action

-Adrian Matejka

I'm caught in a bouquet of skin
and hair. Slaves, up and down
my blood like a boot in mud.
A constellation of almost haves

and never knews pointing north.
That's why my childhood is a handful
of oceans and warped wood, shaken
like dice. Hopscotch lips, double ply

knees. On the one hand, sand and spit.
On the other, a coffle of spiders
eating under a split fist moon.
Free means artifice. Being free

means standing on a stanchion
of jive, black face or otherwise.


Loosely using Matejka's theme of entrapment in the first stanza and then recycling some of the same language I produced this:

I’m caught in the nails of this garden
gate. Cracked and rotting in rhythm
with the drool dripping from chinked
hinges. Remember when the children

staged Julius Caesar in black face
among the marigolds last summer,
and you said the heat had a way
of drenching the nights with murder?

From my perspective the moon splits
in five different ways, death is not one.
The funny thing about Caesar, you said,
was he abhorred mud, the sight

of it trapping the boots of hungry men
as they sunk like guilt into brown cement.
Odd, then how the children trampled
the marigolds into the dirt and you

suddenly became ill. I recall no applause
for cast or final gasp, in pity or otherwise.

Junkyard Quotes 1-5, Week 1

*Quotes in progress throughout the week*

"The March fool with another month added to his folly."
definition of April Fool from Ambrose Bierce's The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary

"How to make Pom Pom Flowers."
the name of a craft blog

"She was a beautiful woman, but not in this picture."
Madison Smartt Bell, Narrative Design

"His eyeballs look like he bought them in a joke shop."
Denis Johnson, Jesus' Son

"You are the little God of your poems."
workshop with Tom Lux

"But I think it's okay to shoot them because they bite and can eat your house."
Tom Lux on Carpenter bees

Improv 2, Week 1

I was trying to mimic O'Hara's "Having a Coke with You" in the respect that it can be read as a personal address, or almost a letter, to someone very intimate to the speaker. The level of language remains semi-informal and conversational and there is constant play of repetition. What I have thus far with my draft of "Snow" is a base skeleton of what I want to work with in conversation with this particular poem. I want to beef up the language and images. Also, I want to arrange a stronger and more effective set of repetitions. I don't know if I particularly want to mimic some of O'Hara's grammar choices, but the the physical form of how the poem looks on the page is something I want to play around with. (Also, maybe ground the poem with a historical marker to diversify the intimate nature of the subject matter.) Or perhaps even use with idea and subject to turn it into a formally structured poem. This would be an interesting challenge and a great exercise to try. Overall, I feel this is good base material to continue developing.

Having a Coke with You

by Frank O'Hara
is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne
or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian
partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt
partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches
partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary
it is hard to believe when I’m with you that there can be anything as still
as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it
in the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drifting back and forth
between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles

and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint
you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them
I look
at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world
except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it’s in the Frick
which thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go together the first time
and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism
just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or
at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow me
and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them
when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank
or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn’t pick the rider as carefully
as the horse
it seems they were all cheated of some marvellous experience
which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I’m telling you about it

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Snow

I never visit your grave.
It is February, you must be covered in snow.
I wonder if the letter I wrote is still in your pocket, above your body.
I could not touch you so I made my father, your son, put it in your jacket.
I wouldn’t touch you.
No difference, we barely did when you were alive.
The contents of the letter are lost in my mind.
I remember writing something about you missing my wedding.
I was only fourteen.
I was not getting married.
I try to think of what I do remember.
Photos, mainly, not of you and I,
but events that have nothing to do with me or us.
You standing, in black and white, young, cigarette in mouth, that jet black hair
Slicked back and a white shirt with the cigarette pack rolled up in the shelve.
A photo of you older, in color, larger, leaving the automotive plant.
You waved to the Salvation Army Santa ringing his bell in the cold.
I do not remember smiling.
Even as a child I always thought you were stern when I did not even know what stern meant.
I remember you in the garden and in the barn
I remember that truck, always taking you away, then once for the last time.
You used to let me play in the camper.
That dusty camper where I pretended to be grown-up.
I try to remember you and me,
but all I remember is just you and just me.
Little spots of the past.
I lived in your house for a year, right up stairs.
The whole tenth year of my life.
What I remember most is you coming up to rummage in the attic,
once to defrost the freezer, and another time to collect the rent from my parents.
No Christmas visits, or if you were there I don’t remember, it’s just the same.

Face Lift

Face Lift

They peel her face like an olive,
old kisses, once foot printing
her brow, now amputated.
Cloistering off unknown,
in a jar? Mausoleum?
The other’s face took tight,
Switched and stitched,
conspiring with new bones,
The new eyes grip the mirror,
she nods at a reflection.
Doctors wrap her head in scarves,
so slick and white, and clinging
with luck. Her mouth--
like an inviting sepulcher,
recognizes the echo of lungs.
Before the surgery she swallowed
her eyelashes so to recall
old flutters and lovers’ fingertips.
Now she smiles with lips that
mothered babies she never,
not once, stroked to sleep

Nimbus

Nimbus

The names of the dead are not nearly as heavy
as pennies or the ink it takes to declare one deceased,

stamped as they are with the faces of silent.
When the priest scatters dust over the Dutch-door

coffin, wading in the dirt known as Heaven
the body’s name peers down at its former self

like scanning the newspaper for yard sales.
The name might even disapprove and feel

evicted, turned out like the wash.
In ancient Bulgaria mourners carry the dead

feet first from their houses or lop their heads off
all together so as not to entice the living

with the stillness of their breath.
When I was ten I gave my mother charcoal rubbings

of Lodi’s tombstones. The names of the dead are not hard
to steal, as one might imagine. More like kissing winter

goodbye or whacking a spider with a shoe. Shooing
away a mosaic of leaves I find Lodi’s forgotten

in a parade of wilting carnations, plastic mementos,
beer cans in final toast. The orphaned veil of winter.

For instance, yesterday a nuisance of bees hummed
inside the wood of our deck, a performance we applauded

with more Raid. And though last night you scolded me
for killing a moth, poisoning bees left you remorseless,

an empty sugar jar. The bees wheeze and fret
in the nimbus of our comfort, exploding

out of holes drilled just so,
plunging eagerly to the concord of silence.

The names of the dead or the vowels we open
our mouths to, litter our deck.

Hydra

Hydra

I spit water
to the moon.
On a branch,
an arthropod
pitter pats
on my belly,
a crow perches
on my arm.
Spittle leaks
from my mouth.
as rumors numb
the apple trees,
newsprint in blade,
blameless as Amymone.

Living at Indian Rock

Living at Indian Rock

Four months now since the quiet Inca
welcomed our landing.
I arranged and polished the silver,
blanketing the house in mirrors.
The moon quivers, pocked and white
as the tide. Every leaf is a footprint,
knitting a path with fig and smoke,
birthing Autumn under the roof.
Though the brooms guard the far corners
of our house we might veil ourselves
in the dust gathering on the coarse spires
of their hands or billow out with the rituals
rising from the hearth.
I lace emerald scarabs in the doorways,
link after link until they sag, Egypt heavy,
draping our shoulders like shawls.
We settle underneath.
Today I discovered one in the wooden bowl
nesting the oranges.
The bowl is not Africa,
my hand, hot as a minister’s stare, crushed
the beetle against the bowl.
Derelict vermin, soiling the oranges with myth.
At night the linen snakes around our feet,
we grow dumb with fat while outside
our saddles rot in the snow.
And up the river, down through Rebel Trail,
grass patches over the footprints we once
dutifully stomped to warn the Inca
of our coming arrival.

The Light Bulb People

The Light Bulb People

They watch us, from the convex
belly of incandescence.

Like babies, they slide and inch
up the cords, breaching glass

and invention, that they may inspect
and know what twists the world.

In their handheld universe, they only
tilt their heads and ponder

the curiosities of unfurling teeth.
Innocent as fingers they corset us

in light as we unknowingly perform
the odd little number for their swollen blinks,

hot and pink for the clapping.
Do they listen too? Our soft and watery

speak? Grappling at the corners
of our mumbles? Do they avail

the rotting fruit, the flies that quicken
to the bin, filching every minute

we think we are alone? Thieving
little angels, swinging on a current.

They steal like gypsies the ticks of our watch.

Persephone

Persephone

In a kingdom of glass cutters, she lives off breakage,
crack and fracture, her body a book slit open,
locusts leaking out, stinking of wishes.
Locked up in blue, she revels in smoke signals.
Children cry. She is the toxin, she thinks, the abscess.
One prick from her and salt rushes to the wound
like a bullet, stinging of electricity.

In the story where she kill the lion,
a dead white dove falls repeatedly from the sky,
and she cannot repair it. Only the story grows stronger.
Outside, a child’s blue sweater collects fall leaves,
while an army of daylight marches against the dusk.

Daffodils

Daffodils

Little weeds dressed in turpentine shine,
necks drooping like the arches on bridges,
like the stillborn, all grayish yellow
and wrinkly baby hands, milk sour sweet.
I finger the limp stems and avow, if I in fact
had a daughter rooted inside me, I’d rip her out.
Little weed, worming mole, dirt under my nails
I scrape out with a bent paperclip all pink
and fancy like her girl parts and my girl parts.
Little girl, little mine and not mine, you float
blobby matter, mattering little as the seasons dwindle.

Burning Pornography in the Woods

Burning Pornography in the Woods

Have you ever seen an albino
groundhog or built an entire city
out of sunlight?
Ask what burning meant, a hand or two
cupping a toad, this new naked witch,
charred and wrinkled,
Breasts heavenward, her back an editorial.
We burned
that woman in the woods,
or rather the likeness of that
woman, naked, paper, and tempting
as a plump apple.
I laughed at the sight
of her fiery consumption, I was only ten
(my accomplice ten as well)
just playing
with a different doll,
nothing like building a house,
nothing like calling the dog
to save us from the groundhog,
alone we brave, two little girls
burning pornography in the woods.

Tarpon Springs

Tarpon Springs

Down past the sponge boats, where barnacles gum the bellies
of ships like myths of flight, merchants trade sponges for sugar,
sugar for sulking gods, then return again for the kitsch.
High on the hill, some parthenon juts: polished alligator heads
slick as midway sharks, postcards parceling out their palm trees,
sand-plastered, sun-drowned. Wish you were here.
Tiny pink-fanned shells backdropped with acrylic Florida
ocean-scapes float like suns in their netted shopping bags
for the long haul to Vermont. This is the Sponge Dock District,

where tourists like pelicans gobble up the bluefin, bucket
their catch in the crossfire of polaroids’ ocular flashes.
This is the new Athens, or some dream of a dream of it,
clinging to America’s finger, hard and padded
with the Old World, a finger jabbed in the Caribbean’s back.
Once, I slept in a village in Italy and dreamt of Africa.
I’m never where I want to be. Always there
when here—this Florida, my vineyard, and I am gorging

on olives plucked and plundered, pits spit with a kick
of the tongue. And these paint-peeled hurricane houses:
couldn’t they be the stucco cliff dwellings that lace
the Mediterranean? Couldn’t these sponges be Grecian
mouths wet with wine, gulls crying like winged Nike?
Suddenly, instead of crowding the streets with antiquity,
I give way to gulf sands mismatched as blown glass,
to oranges bloated with forgiveness, bees orbiting
the knotted blossoms. Couldn’t this be enough?