Free Entry 2, Week 8

When the sap levels are low
and the shoots are free of leaves
there comes the rare occasion
when they each disagree.
Usually this falling out stems
from winter or if winter arrived
at its proper checkmark, the calendar
maybe a day or so behind.
What the saps fails to recognize
is its lack of ability to weave
itself like fingers, until a cup forms
and gives to others the hollows
of industry. Somewhere in the past,
shoots stretched like constellations,
a bud-a star, a perched bird-a meteor,
all basic ingredients for harvest.
The moon spells out a language that falls
into the hammocks of leaves
with seasonal torrents, and so blisters
of water dot the undersides of sills
that overlook the Willow groves.
There are only certain types of Willow
that are good for weaving. Winter
being the ideal time for collection,
if possible. Odd how the tree so resembles
fingers as if the fingers were a cage,
caging a monument a disagreement.

Free Entry 1, Week 8

What is stillness? What is more still than last
frayed dandelion holding onto its white bones?
It gives with wind, each sway equals a bending

towards forgiveness of itself, to the last girl who claimed
to feast upon leaves. Imagine this: a fist, knuckles
jeweled like the glint of a new balloon,

as it swaps a pocket for a face, yellowing an eye.
A still bruise below a blood shot iris now a clutter
with the blooming redness of anger. What is more

still than an empty bed, where the absent bodies
press harder than bones of the real? What is more
still than the ice breaking the pain of the fist’s cut,

arriving and departing at the bone? Imagine that
same fist grinding the dough of language, shaping
fire of mouths-spitting jewels that case names
and oxygen-the gift of failure that all must breathe.

Stratgey Response, Week 8

What I found interesting in Natasha Trethewey’s Native Guard is the underlying current of travel that remains implied with memory, history, and even a parent’s death. The whole collection situates itself as a visitation, even the book’s opening epigraph from Charles Wright implies a nostalgic voyage: “Memory is a cemetery / I’ve visited once or twice, white / ubiquitous and the set-aside /Everywhere under foot…” What also becomes doubly fascinating is the content of which Trethewey writes, death, is in fact everywhere literally underfoot in the collection. History is behind us, death is under us, and memory is located in a long mental plane that must be sought out and arrived at. The speakers of the collection are constantly mobile: “my mother is boarding a train,” “the old Crescent makes its last run” (The Southern Crescent”), “when I turned to walk away” (Graveyard Blues), “Every spring- / Pilgrimage-the living come to mingle” (Pilgrimage), “We leave Gulfport at noon” (Elegy for the Native Guards), and etc. What this collection seems to present is not just a memorial to the dead, but an overwhelming sense of displacement or a dissatisfaction of remaining stationary for the speakers within. Arguably, Trethewey uses the tropes of history, memory, and death as venues to explore personal issues of a bi-racial upbringing. It would make sense that the collection and its speakers experience tension with stationary existence because inhabiting a bi-racial identity entails lifelong transition. I think Trethewey really taps into this particular exploration in "Southern Gothic." Not only does to bring in the language of mixed race: peckerwood, nigger lover, half-breed, zebra; but she also the idea of an unfixed identity. In "Southern Gothic" the speaker comments on how her family "huddled on the tiny island of bed, quiet / in language of blood: the house, unsteady / on its cinderblock haunches, sinking deeper / into the much of ancestry (lines 15-18). The house, which typical represents foundation, is unsteady; the house itself is not the typical safe haven of identity. Even the ancestry itself is mucked and unclear in its lineage. All this leads me to question what really is meant by "native" in this text? Does "native" even exist in the sense of sole owner or rightful inhabitant?

Improv 2, Week 8

Elegy For the Native Guards
Natasha Trethewey

We leave Gulfport at noon; gulls overhead
trailing the boat-streamers, noisy fanfare-
all the way to Ship Island. What we see
first is the fort, its roof of grass, a lee-
half reminder of the men who served there-
a weathered monument to some of the dead.

Inside we follow the ranger, hurried
though we are to get to the beach. He tells
of graves lost in the Gulf, the island split
in half when Hurricane Camille hit,
shows us casemates, cannons, the store that sells
souvenirs, tokens of history long buried.

The Daughters of the Confederacy
has placed a plaque here, at the fort's entrance-
each Confederate soldier's name raised hard
in bronze; no names carved for the Native Guards-
2nd Regiment, Union men, black phalanx.
What is monument to their legacy?

All the grave markers, all the crude headstones-
water-lost. Now fish dart among their bones,
and we listen for what the waves intone.
Only the fort remains, near forty feet high,
round, unfinished, half open to the sky,
the elements-wind, rain-God's deliberate eye.

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

The boys left the fountain around dusk, I watched
as they mulled away from the town square, down
the hill to where the sidewalk met the creek,
and crumbled into the sand and glass of the water’s
edge. The fountain churned up bubbles like an overloaded

washing machine, the Indian in the center was dressed
in layers of of black and gold crate paper: school colors
of the Blackriver Pirates. From the window of the pizzaria
I noticed the Indian was more then cemented to the water,
but to monumuent that he didn’t realize was himself.

Robins fluttered the paper, one perched atop the headdress
while the storefronts dimmed causing a smolder
of tangled light on the bubbles that cascaded over the lip
of stone circling the base. Last week, we learned in school
that Iroquois means People of the Longhouse. In the winter

they made fishing holes in the ice, sometimes catching nothing
for weeks. Boys in the tribe were made to dive into the water
if they can’t produce fish for their families: for those who waited
in the longhouse. I wonder if the Indian welcomes those boys
with their soap. Does he tell them, when they are all alone,
they must dive into the creek where the sidewalk crumbles,
to clean off after the hunt, that everything water touches is legacy.

Junkyard quotes 1-5, Week 8

"Edit your Consciousness"
-title of photograph

"Spray to forget, Shake well."
-text inside same photograph

"So we must dig and delve unceasingly."
-Claude Monet

"The condo’s walls are yellow and blue, the furniture is made of wicker, there are pillows and seashells. There are tall, sprawling bougainvillea bushes along the side of the road."

"On the rare occasion when they disagree about something..."
-article in The New Yorker

"Somewhere in my past, something had gone wrong for me…"

“A grilled cheese sandwich was returned tonight."
-Saïd Sayrafiezadeh

"There are only certain types of Willow that are good for weaving and they need to be collected in the winter if possible, when the sap levels are low and the shoots are free of leaves."
-instructions for basic basket weaving

Improv 1, Week 8

At Dusk
Natasha Trethewey

"It's as if she can't decide
whether to leap over the low hedge,
the neat rows of flowers, and bound
onto the porch, into the steady cirlce
of light, or stay where she is: luminous
possibility-all that would keep her
away from home-flitting before her" (lines 13-19).

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
It’s as if she can’t decide whether to wear stockings
wrapped around her head or silk ascot with a pewter pin.
The stockings fur up with gray cat hair, so she decides

to go for the knee-length kimono, which really is the best
costume for the day. We have reached four days of warm,
she says, but the cards call for the start of anatomy to bloom

again. History be told, she knows little of independence,
even in July there weighs a bold sense of porch swings
never left or barely deserted. Today it’s a lime-colored blouse

that drapes the curves of her neck, pressing to the folds
of her ears. The tweet of crickets envelopes her childhood
home, which she stands in now, both old as the rust

that crawls over the brass doorknobs. Yesterday
was only dress rehearsal, costume changes with drawers
full of scarves, brooches, minks, all waiting for her,
the one to bring sitting into standing and silence to parade.

Free Entry 2, Week 7

You rise thick as fog and I knew
nothing of that secret you held in your hand.
My father said it was a tin cup
but I have my doubts about its origins.
Once during harvest time
when the room smelt crisp with apples
and it was time for me to say goodbye.
I, full of the most childish aplomb, lept
to your cheek for a kiss. A smile
overtook your face as red came
to mine for the act which I realized
I had never attempted before,
a kiss for you, my grandfather.

Stratgey Response, Week 7

One element of Sandra Meeks’ poetry that caught my attention right from the start is the fact that she uses no punctuation throughout her entire collection, Biogeography. Looking these phenomena I could not help but think of two things, Derek Walcott’s Sabbaths W.I. and the title of Meeks’ collection containing the word geography. The two, Walcott and geography go hand and hand, so I began to wonder what Meeks’ was playing with here by pairing the ideas of location and the lack of terminal punctuation in her poems. Also, I began to wonder if she is perhaps engaging in a realized or unconscious poetical conversation with Walcott. Looking mainly at the text for memorization this week, “Mapping the Drift,” I began to examine the title and its interesting denotation of locating, or mapping, a divide, or drift. Clearly this plays along with Meeks’ collection in terms of how she is using, or not using, punctuation. Meeks partaking in a schism from traditional poetic convention in grammar by choosing to not use terminal punctuation; yet her collection stands as a location, or a map, of where this divide is taking place. The poem(s) ironically locate the absence. And in “Mapping the Drift” in particular there are numerous actual locations named: southern colonists, America, Carolina, Oklahoma, the South, etc. Also, the poem begins with the phrase, “By law,” which clearly Meeks is playing around with the ideas of poetic governs, because she is not following traditional grammar laws. I began to wonder if Meeks was taking a cue from Walcott and using the internal textual presence of landscape to stand in as a form of punctuation. I question this because Meeks’ use of geography does not frequent as often in the poem as Walcott; maybe it is more inclusive in the overall collection then in each individual poem. Meeks’ collection is also contains the word bio, as in biological, and is similar to Walcott internal play of punctuation through landscape markers. Possible essay idea here? Needs time for further exploration.

Improv 2, Week 7

Astraphobia (selection)
Sandra Meeks

I play the recorded storm each day notched higher
for the dog thunder sends crashing through window blinds'

contrived calm, horizon strung again and again
against our view. Terror must be erased
by the distilled music of terror. The president say terror

twenty-nine times in his speech. Lines in the sand multiply
across the desert's wrist, the typical become beautiful
as electric light born in glass fist's crosshairs
at the flick of a switch--

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

Trigger the sound of moist roots that stretch like teeth,
play the recording of this sound under a park bridge, to hear

the tone as the pulling of bark elongates like Jersey
taffy. The music will be bitter as if sucking on a tarnished penny,
but these instructions find agreement with the weather,

aligned with Almanac exactness. Roots extend every three
years, growing tall like the tooth of a good lie. Goodness
and badness are really just the same, it’s just which is preferable.
A bad root narrows instead of widening–-

emits a darker pitch that sticks to the teeth of animals
when licked, sometimes shocking them into tasting
other roots, not sweet but rather like a sour walnut
from last year’s harvest. Animals make room

for flavors of doubt, using the memories of a bad lick
as currency for next winter’s gather. Sometimes in the park
they can hear the orchestra of roots and wonder
what is more preferable: the sour rhythm of earth
shifting or the din it makes on the bridge’s steel beams?

Improv 1, Week 7

Mapping the Drift (selection)
Sandra Meeks

By law, southern colonists raised mulberries, a sheen
silkworms spun to sleek winding cloths,
body casings unraveled to thread
women wove to clothe children now woven

into this earth sprouting shepherd’s purse, beggarweed,
evening primrose a green an anole, American
chameleon, has matched exactly, the hunt a stillness

sculpting him as second stem until, crossing
so easily into a predicted future, he darkens
to burnt umber, shade of the dying doveweed
he steps onto, disappearing once more

into this battlefield where I’ve traced myself
back to the great-great-great-great Carolina
grandfather who fought among the ancestors

of these blighted pines. Don’t we all long
to become the view?

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

I’ve traced myself: flat-footed and drunk
in my grandmother’s wedding dress. I circle
on the wall the white doll’s pointy elbows
and I smudge a basting of mulberries on its cheeks.

I draw an arrow to each scar and label history,
poison oak from trunk of dogwood, corner of armrest
on hotel lobby chair, patch of briars during 7th grade

hike. I follow the wall to the one arm that shortens
a bit more than the other, ending at the wrist,
tractor explosion at county fair. On that day
two 4-H boys were passing out jars of mulberries,

and the crowd shrieked, after the smoke lifted,
to find them smeared in berry. My grandmother
used to always answer the door in her silk nightgown,
certain the visitor would always be her lover.

She pinned my hair back for me everyday
when I lost my hand. Now she is blind as my left set
of fingers, always searching for a stranger
to gasp and ask, can you see me?

Free Entry 1, Week 7

Peach belly full
She hangs. A time capsule
Of birthday cakes and wine bottles
decorate
Her skull like shrapnel
Decorates a leg. She scans
Verse written by a woman
Who uses her shoe
As an ashtray. Laughing
She twiddles her thumbs.
A man sneaks by
Wearing nothing
But his underclothes
holding a wastebasket.
Hmm, she thinks. Office party.
Glancing over at the table
She spots
Spools of yarn. She knows the yarn
Is the right color
Blue
because she wants
To bite it, like a cheek.
The twisting knots of the wool
Remind
Her of the suicide in the neighborhood
Last winter. The man’s mother
Died. Elderly.
Varicose veins of blue yarn.
He could not live without
Mother.
His intestines
Spilled out
like blue yarn.

Junkyard Quotes 1-5, Week 7

"lips taste like winter peaches and cold water."
--reader from creative writing panel at the Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture since 1900

"the sound of a sickle"
--poetry reading at Louisville

"as if I were existence itself"
--poetry reading at Louisville

"Although the fate of the Holberts was perhaps more violent than that of many lynched African Americans, both Harris and McMillen suggest it was, on the whole, typical."
--Gary Richards, Lovers & Beloveds: Sexual Otherness in Southern Fiction 1936-1961
(I really like the structure of this particular sentence.)

"she remembered that she still held pieces of mushroom in her hands, and she set to work very carefully, nibbling first at one and then the other"
Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Improv 2, Week 6

The First Star
-John Poch

There are no paperwhites on the meadow edge
this time of year; only snow that shimmers
like paperwhite petals in the farewell window
of March's postponed clemency, dune-blown
with skirt-pretty ripples. Like someone cared.
Why come out here and think of paperwhites
bent toward a window with their clustered cups
of six-tricks listening when half a dozen deer
stand prey-still on the valley's facing hill?
The sound of my own voice substitutes
for the voice of God. Here I am. And of course,
the sudden windscatter on snow like sand.
A few maples clacking. The day dies,
and an invisible coydog pack descends
on the fawn of my optimism. The first star
hovers out of nowhere. For courage's sake,
I think it real as a blown flag shadow.
But it could be the spark in air at the end
of a whip on the back of a nightmare.

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


There are no paperwhites on the meadow edge,
nor do margins of gold hold wheat
as well as hands--in their lack of volume,
they still manage to cup just as any other bucket.
When the shimmers of petals bid farewell
to ripples and become drops of meadow,
postponed in sand along the edge
of the forest’s windows,
someone will manage to capture it all
in a photograph. Of course, the trick of hands
is that they only descend To full depth
when the first star takes position
in the basin Of sky above optimism,
somewhere before the first flash.
Trick photography dies with the sound
of its own voice,Which is to say
that it never dies only recedes in popularity.

Junkyard Quotes 1-5, Week 6

"It left the cellar forty years ago and carried itself like pile of dishes[...]"
-Robert Frost, Witch of Coos

"This mirror gives the users the ability to draw."
-Instruction on a video game

"Let's talk in functions."
-speech bubble from internet cartoon

"Only about one-fifth of the world’s largest desert, the Sahara, is covered with sand; the remainder is made up of rock formations."
-Random fact from Mental Floss

"Citizens! All Hail your comrade of steel."
-USSR propoganda poster

Free Entry 2, Week 6

II. Richard

Charlie, his dog, ran away one day
But reappeared after Richard falls,
On knees praying to God, Charlie
Bounds back in a halo of light.
He does not know what to think

Of that. That. As if the slight moment
Of religion acts as nothing but a pronoun.
Jerusalem’s famous little green man,
Might be out there, might not. There.
There‘s, there again, like That

Springing up when people do not
Want to name what they believe.
What. On a mountain in Santa Cruz
A witch takes Richard to the top,
Later his wife will leave him for
Her lesbian lover. The wives visit

Him from California. He’s thinking
Of going back to practice psychiatry.
He’s 63. Richard calls on me,
We talk. About novels, medicine,
Walking. Somehow I bring up
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,

He tells me that at one time he
Went to the same psychiatrist
As Ken Kesey. I wonder if they ever
Passed each other in the hallway.

Free Entry 1, Week 6

I. Alice

I pegged her for Dickenson. Shining
By her side floats Collected Poems. Quaint
Lady. Poet. Playwright (one in New York).

My starry eyed glamour filled ramble rattle
head - fuzz. All at what she lives. I ask,
What do you devote your time to presently?

A cookbook. Well a journey really.
South Florida. What does she cook
up? Timid. I hear nothing of her voice

Above a smiling hello. The chomping fangs
Come out alone with Dickenson, wearing
White, hanging in the breeze of the balcony.

Below her suburbanite kids mate. Sweaty
Awkward sex for drugs. When she is not here
Editing, pecking, Dickenson-nizing, she

Recites Blanche Dubois. She weighs heavy.
A twelve year old girl, fat and dancing
In front of the mirror. She buys pink

Stationary placing slips between the leaves
Of her home potter plant. Ripping
The parchment from the leaf hands

Of a plastic greenery Stanley. Pink
Deeds. Dressed in toilet paper minks,
Tin can Chinese lanterns. She cries

And laments. Swaying to the pantry
Caressing the cheek of her can corn
Suitors. South Florida bayou nutcase.

What swamps rasp the roots of her dark
Abstract words? How many “loves,”
“bleaks,” and “lies” ravel around

An alligator tooth? Where’s her white
Dress with the girl inside? She leaves
Everyday with one more word in hand.

Improv 1, Week 6

Icarus, Rejected
John Poch

His canceled self-addressed stamped envelope
looked like a little pillow , all feathers and down!
All feathers and down, R.I.P, you dope,

the foul note replied. There went his hope.
But there was more. Cloud to town. Dream to noun.
His canceled self addressed stamped envelope

with his poetry manuscript: A tired trope.
Your melted ice cream sundae pile of brown.
All feathers and down, R.I.P., you dope.

Stay off the drugs. None of your beeswax. Nope.
and more: A dead baby in a baptism gown.
His canceled self addressed stamped envelope

held a hard pill to swallow. A pillow? How could he cope
with: Flown. On your own. A bandage for your crown?
All feathers and down, R.I.P., you dope.

Mother's smile to smothered frown. No Pope,
the Editor added, drown in drool, you clown,
you canceled self addressed stamped envelope,
all feathers and down, R.I.P., you dope.


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

His worn skin hung like a flap of dough
weighing over the edge of a glass pie dish,
all powdered and ready to become something new.

His mellow hands forget their fingers. That they itch
to press hard the seam of an envelope,
in which so many letters were left unsaid,

children hungry for a birthday greeting.
Time has smothered his years into checkpoints
and lack of paychecks. Instead of macaroni

valentines or wedding invitations, his desk holds
a Gideon Bible and two graduation announcements,
clipped from the next town’s paper. Newsprint creased

to a small rip. Years of travel in his wallet
left them smeared blank, but he knows what they said:
honor roll, scholarship, most likely to succeed,

and always, somewhere in the conclusion, proud mother.
Once, he wrote an amendment on a diner napkin:
No father to speak of, just a name on birth certificate.

Stratgey Response, Week 5

What I found myself being particularly drawn to this week was the issue of subject in Writing Poetry’s chapter 11. What is really interesting and useful in helping remain committedly detached from one’s own work is channeling or filtering one subject through another subject. Looking at Ashley’s poem, Laundry, the common, every-day task of hang clothes out to dry becomes a vein for detailing a young girl’s first period. The subject of a girl “blooming” into a woman is an event that seems highly covered by other female poets (I am really thinking here of Rita Dove’s Adolescence II) and Ashley’s own way of exploring the topic captures the ordinary without making the moment overwrought or melodramatic. Mother and daughter discovering the period almost takes on the feeling of completing tasks or a checklist, just like doing daily chores. “Just like that,” the speaker becomes a woman. Even after finding the period the mother and daughter continue to pass each other laundry and clothespins. Keeping the language at a conversational level helps keep the subject of menstruation from becoming too fantastical, keeps the subject from pointing too much at itself. The subject of the poem may not even be the event of discovering a period, but the speaker’s nonchalance or apathy on the matter seems to take focus. The ennui is what becomes appealing after several read throughs of the poem. After reading this poem I started to think casually off the top of my head about events that may seem monumental and continued along a similar vein as the young female speaker’s concerns in Ashley’s piece: death of loved one, losing one’s virginity, a wedding, birth of a child, etc. Would this speaker, if her voice was carried on through a series of poems or a whole collection carry the same nonchalance towards other events? Would that be believable? While losing her virginity could she be eating a pear? When learning she is suddenly pregnant could she be polishing silver for a formal dinner party? Is she sweeping the kitchen floor hours before getting married? I like these odd pairings; they could potentially produce fresh narratives, images, juxtaposing sentiments, and help deflect otherwise “melodramatic” moments with the ordinary, mundane tasks that we all face every day.

Improv 2, Week 5

Meditation at Lagunitas
by Robert Hass

All the new thinking is about loss.
In this it resembles all the old thinking.
The idea, for example, that each particular erases
the luminous clarity of a general idea. That the clown-
faced woodpecker probing the dead sculpted trunk
of that black birch is, by his presence,
some tragic falling off from a first world
of undivided light. Or the other notion that,
because there is in this world no one thing
to which the bramble of blackberry corresponds,
a word is elegy to what it signifies.

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


All new thinking is about loss.
Or about oil on canvas which generates more pondering.
The principle is this: Antarctica’s dry valleys
hold enough blackberry bushes to camouflage
an airplane factory. Blue smoldering more blue
until only the memory of blue exists. Mixed in unison
with some family recipe for courage the word
blue shields like the idea to erase. In Naperville, Illinois
the locals mummify old words. More precious than Egyptian
cats, rolled in oils of the gold, the mayor elects
old words once they dry in the mouths of pondering.
The first word ousted was found crusted
on the wooden molar of an abacus, not sliding
but flaking so slow that it could have been a scene
from canvas. No amount of blueberry bushes can hide
all the dead words, there is only the blue and what it signifies.

Junkyard Quotes 1-5, Week 5

"I stopped claiming Indian blood [...]"
-Adrian Matejka from The Devil's Garden

"I'm going to sit down and I'm not going to get up again."
-Tom Lux at McEver reading in regards to giving the first round of reader introductions

"Antarctica's dry valleys."

"Camouflaging An Airplane Factory"
-Mental Floss

"An email to the universe"
-blurp from the internet

"The days of man are like grass, blooms like a flower in a field, the wind barely graze it,and it is gone, and the place where he was no longer recognize."
-caption from Malgorzata Niegel painting

"Moment of luck is oil on canvas."
-my own twist on another Malgorzata painting

"Every bird has hit the road this morning."
--lyric from Chris Black's Pass Away

Improv 1, Week 5

Integration
-Adrian Matejka

using the first line of the poem:

"No amount of hoodoo could convince"


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

No apple seed or half eaten cod could commiserate
the plate like the dinner-side blares of water-logged trumpets.
When the chef recommends a garnish of caramelized pie crust
on the diners’ chocolate mousse, they chuckle at his wet boot
tongue for which they can’t place the origin. Loose tie gentlemen
twitch for the company of a cigarette and the women buckle
their slender fingers tighter around the stems of wine glasses.
Crumbs glaze the beard of chef and they all know that he must dip
into the wares. But the night can’t be helped. The dinner was meant
to erupt with each soggy note of the trumpeter, sword fishing the jaws
of patrons in a rigged collection of laughter. Cigarettes held the hand
of the unwanted conversation—even the dog bone centerpiece
could not arouse flapping from a single tongue. One might suspect
that the cod froze to their mouths or the chef forgot to nail in the heat.
The get-down feeling of Mars trumps all pennies found good luck side up.
Ghosts haul the train tracks with them, leaving all the vandalized copper
for the pockets of the young. Originally origins floated like ghosts,
but then slowly started to mutt like dogs. Lip a baby’s ear to sleep:
the soft, rolled part that feels like soggy graham cracker.

Free Entry 2, Week 5

No apple seed or half eaten cod could commiserate
the plate like the dinner-side blares of water-logged trumpets.
When the chef recommends a garnish of caramelized pie crust
on the diners’ chocolate mousse, they chuckle at his wet boot
tongue for which they can’t place the origin. Loose tie gentlemen
twitch for the company of a cigarette and the women buckle
their slender fingers tighter around the stems of wine glasses.
Crumbs glaze the beard of chef and they all know that he must dip
into the wares. But the night can’t be helped. The dinner was meant
to erupt with each soggy note of the trumpeter, sword fishing the jaws
of patrons in a rigged collection of laughter. Cigarettes held the hand
of the unwanted conversation—even the dog bone centerpiece
could not arouse flapping from a single tongue. One might suspect
that the cod froze To their mouths or the chef forgot to nail in the heat.

Free Entry 1, Week 5

As if to harp: Please return the wicker patio set,
mold and all, would hurt my patient feelings.
Or to sergent out all your belongings only to roll
call them back falls in the rut of my hammock. I sop up
the information of your pleasantries like a cruller
sops up coffee. And in the Florida heat as I tote
spoons, one from every state and then some, I begin
to dread the burn of silver on my fingertips.
You are mistaken about your possessions, they go
after you. Instead you perch with pen in hand
to mark lamp, dish, and screwdriver with familial
letter. The neighbors take in the scene from the edge
of the driveway, hovering like yard sale scavengers,
eyeing the racks of evening gowns sailing from stoop
to backseat. Even if two weeks later you ask for it all
back, after results of minor surgery, I find nothing useful
in your blunder. So as I haul that same broken down,
Off-white wicker chair that you said once cradled
the plump body of my mother, back up the stoop,
into the now naked living room of your misfortunes,
I try to forget that mason jar of silver forming in my chest.

Strategy Response, Week 4

One technique that Matejka uses in “Colloquialism” particularly is deflecting the possible emotional connection to subject matter by playing with the structure of the poem. In “Colloquialism” he sets up a “manual-style” form to detail racial and/or gang violence that helps keep a level of committed detachment. Numerating certain lines of the poem that features the process of a gang mutilation acts as one possible way to alleviate some of the psychology connections that poet, speaker, readers may have with such heavy, political subject matter. I would like to try to mimic such a filter, possibly through numeration or another technique, in which I could present subject matter that, may be of an emotional, political, or racial matter. How does one write about the death of a family member or loved one without sounding to attached, emotional, and even precious at times? How does one write about a memory of child abuse without becoming too “fantastic” with the violence or so vague that it remains unclear what the speaker is addressing in the poem? Form and structure may be just one place to start in keeping a distance from emotional subject matter. I plan to use this technique in the near future to tackle some delicate issues.