Calisthenics 1, Week 10

A Forgotten Book on a Shelf

I am perception in written form.

My beginnings, an exposition in a true place,

home to a man who lets me collect dust

in an oak-paneled compartment

to forget another time, another setting,

landscapes beyond his front door-- he forgets the room 

I truly belong, a room still hollow 

with the echoing calls of climax. I rest here,

shelfed, a cardboard butterfly whose wings

fold limp upon the insides of my revelation,

evident in Times New Roman and covered

with a thick case of hard-back blue. Who knew

the conflicts that would arise rapid-fire, when he

and she clawed character flaws from each other's 

eyes and I watched from my condo on the shelf,

sandwiched between some book about Christianity,

some book about personality--the readings 

of a psychologist-in-training and my substantial

words, a remedy against the mental constraints

of reality existed like a forgotten getaway into magic,

into romance, into science fiction battles 

on a starship cruising into the vastness counseling

could not recuperate and did not explain--I was clearly

her book. And he left me here, my woody scent

blending into dust, forgotten the moment she resolved

to stamp invisible footprints into concrete slabs,

past the scribbled momentos of some stranger on basement floors--

it was obvious there was no harlequinn left between them--

and he continued to ignore me until the dog-ear

on my insides left a crease in my heart, and when she called

him and asked to have me back, to return her 

literary creativity, her nonfiction fiction, that novel

sample of a blip, of an out of world experience 

she lent him did he know, do you think, what I knew?

Does he know the lost learnings of happy endings,

that there was no way to truly forget the last chapter

of the last book in all its splendid volume, 

and I felt the surge of life in their character

as he walked to her front door, and she opened it,

and when their two hands passed my spine

I could feel the tingle of conclusion in my pages.

Free Write 1, Week 10

Our Lady's Child is a Grimm Brothers' fairytale that I described below. It's short if you're interested in the real thing, so if so, look it up and read it. I promised myself I'd never write a poem about my mother, but this idea has been eating away at me for a while.

Our Lady's Child

The Virgin Mary steals children
from wood-cutters who can't cut
bread for his daughter's meals. Too poor.
So she takes the starved child and fills her
with sugar-cakes and paradise in a forest
branched with gold and angel secrets.
Even Heaven has traps.
There are thirteen doors,
and as is the way with God there is
the last door, the forbidden door,
filled with a knowledge denied.
And as is the way with God,
the child is entrusted with keys
to unlock all doors, forbidden
to know the knowledge of the last.
Of course she opens it.
And when the Virgin Mary asks,
though all signs beat-beat the obvious,
the girl lies and the girl denies that door
until she's cast out, a mute, from Heaven.

A king can never change a liar,
and the girl and her royal husband birth
a child, sweet like a doughy biscuit.
And the Virgin Mary, thief that she is,
asks that once heavenly child to sing
the truth of the thirteenth door.
And the girl lies. And lies. And lies.
And her children disappear into traces
of a memory throughout the kingdom--

memories. My mother made sandwiches
for snacks everyday. She taught me
who I was when I forgot myself and stole
my fleece jackets so I couldn't hide anymore.
That sterile night I tossed and shriveled
on a gurney, burnt to the second degree, my mom,
hovered like a flaming angel beside me.
Her red dress the only light house
in a morphine haze. She and I floated
in and out of a mother realm, her kisses
sweeter than any sugar-cake, the butter
of her mother love grew fatty in my veins
until it killed me. And I haven't seen
my mother's crows feet in years.
We don't talk anymore. And I realize
that I'm worth more in my mother's wallet
than I mean in her fat, black heart.

She ripped me away. Stole the thickest
parts of me and ate away my juicy insides.
And my mind begs for forgiveness, pleading
to forget the jagged cracks
in her motherhood, the faults that spew lies
like seepage from an ejector pump.
Mom lied, and she lied, and she sweated
her lies until the real morphed meaningless.
And my burning angel shriveled into a pile of ash
that never made phone calls on birthdays.

The town's people called their queen
a cannibal. She ate her children, consumed
them to protect her lies. To forget
that thirteenth door. She sacrificed
the only gift her body gave her. And the Virgin
took each bundle to Heaven, again and again
and the people cried against the queen
but could not know her hunger. Her need
to bend and fang the truth, limp in her mouth,
throbbing from the kill.
I wonder how her children felt
knowing their mother ate them, swallowed them
to feed her growling need to twist
reality. I wonder what her insides felt like. Was it
wet? Was it painless? Was it as cold inside
her endless belly as watching sandwiches,
watching jackets, watching kisses disappear
into the pulsing emptiness of forgotten time.

Sign-Inventory 1, Week 10

Heather McHugh

Language Lesson 1976

When Americans say a man
takes liberties, they mean

he’s gone too far. In Philadelphia today I saw
a kid on a leash look mom-ward

and announce his fondest wish: one
bicentennial burger, hold

the relish. Hold is forget,
in American.

On the courts of Philadelphia
the rich prepare

to serve, to fault. The language is a game as well,
in which love can mean nothing,

doubletalk mean lie. I’m saying
doubletalk with me. I’m saying

go so far the customs are untold.
Make nothing without words,

and let me be
the one you never hold.

--There's a repetition of America, followed by a repetition of Philadelphia.
--The piece has a hill-like build, using line breaks to create odd potential and then using definitions to clarify the possibilities.
--The piece more than manipulates language, but creates new words, like "mom-ward."
--The "courts" of Philadelphia creates a duality of rich and poor solely by association, basketball courts an association with a middle-class or lesser activity versus the judicial courts of the rich.
--By the seventh stanza, the speaker directly addresses the audience, changing the tone of the piece.
--McHugh creates his own meaning through words and their other meanings. For example, "Doubletalk with me", with double-talk having once been explained as lie can also mean "lie with me."--physically.

Classmate Response 2, Week 10

In response to Samaria's Improv, Week 10:


Larkin gave you a great topic. School really does seem fucked up after reading this piece and I love it. I think perhaps the next step is, however, to remove your work from Larkin's format. It falls very formulaic into what he had already done and as a result goes in direct comparison. Now, one can say the point of improv is to work off another poet's piece, and that's true, but one must also recognize the strength's in that other poet's piece and walk away with some skill set they discovered in it. I think Larkin gave you an eye towards the irony, now you just need to abandon his set up and run with it.

Other than the sound of it, I'm not much for the word "fuck" in poetry, even in Larkin's piece. I think it pumps the work with an artificial electricity. I would argue that underneath this excitement, Larkin performs something really subtle and interesting, almost creates a sort of pity towards the parents, and following Larkin's stanzas I see an attempt at that same emotional evocation but it gets muddled.

The transition from the third to fourth line falls flat to the potential enjambments you could have developed. As a reader I expected with such an odd line break for the next line to hold something perhaps condescending to the idea of thought, or anything more contrasting. There also seems to be too much push for substance in the fourth line by incorporating a teacher's wages and it does not fit into the line well--no amount of thinking will affect a teacher's salary and it's hard to think a teacher would not want a student to think above their wage line.

I'm not sure about calling women, "sandwich makers." It seemed odd the first time I read this. Perhaps just say women and then move on into some more of that great description.

Mediocrity is too syllabic. As far as line breaks go, some of the strong line breaks the piece had before slips in the last stanza, with words "like" and "and" being the breaks. Does "honest" in the last line serve the strongest for you there?

Continue talking about teachers. I think you can even incorporate older teachers in this as opposed to including women. Consider teachers like Socrates or Plato (Plato is a rant in the name of poetry waiting to happen) or if you want to include women, how about dabbling in how women weren't allowed in the educational system for a long time? That's fucked up. By making this new comparison I think you can come up with an even better ending stanza. Hope this helps.

Junkyard Quote 5, Week 10

"A rumor by some guy whose balls I busted."
"Ok, Miss Ball Buster."

Facebook. What a funny verb.

Classmate Response 1, Week 10

In Response to Dawn's Calisthenic 10, Week 10:


Ugh. Finish this, I loved this. I will admit that the message of the post-it was a little heavy--I don't care how in love I am, I generally avoid using "dearest" because even outside of poetry it's cheesy, but the rest of it seems to be ok because then you acknowledge how cheesy and unimportant the note was. I love the imagery that comes along with it--a note traveling in the wind:

"trafficking beneath the soles" (reconsider "the educated," maybe just soles of students)
"spiraled in tornado leaves"

Shave down on unnecessary articles. I am in love with some of the verbs from lines 9-13, even though the meaning of the lines gets lost on me I feel like the images these verbs create are strong enough to create their own meaning.

By the time you hit the random letters you have successfully lost me. I'm going to need you cut the random letters out and elaborate on the abstractions--what fantasy and what truth? Perhaps continue shaping out the situation and explain how the note came to be outside in the first place. It seems there was an ending to the relationship of some kind. Please elaborate on this as well. Is there anything else on the note? Maybe you can include the bits of note in and out of the piece.

The point is, I'd really like to see another draft of this. Please? Hope this helps.