And then there were

"How still could you stay if your life depended on it" -I wonder this about my antsy students daily. ---------------- "I fount it" -Is this lazyness or is this childs mind still trying to figure out past tense? ---------------- "Do you play well in the sandbox" ---------------- "Could teachers gives A's to bullies for picking on certain students?" ---------------- "I can't even afford a half-ass costume to cover my midriff"

Mother Taught Him All the Lessons He Would Ever Need One time a white girl in need of the friend called me white because I was light, because I still am, used to be, chose to fight her, beat her like her parents clearly didn’t, ground her face in dirt and rocks until she was dark as I should have been. My cousin let the fight go on Because she was my teacher at the time. Another time my father Warren Taught me to back the red Chevy up, So faded, I thought he used Kool-Aid to paint, Back it up until you hear glass. I hit up that reverse Because he was your grandfather, the one you are named after. Most times when your grandfather drove through town, he would pick up anyone, anyone walking and not driving needing a ride and possessing two legs he would smile at and help hop in and drive them where they wanted to go: never turned down anyone walking and not driving that is. One time I showed you the picture of your great, great-grandmother And you realized why you are the tone you are An...

This Meant She’s Gone I woke up in a twin bed, morning after, knowing I didn’t get laid: not enough room. I barely have enough room to keep a stack of books beside not that they would love me anyway. I’ve lost the habit of waking up mid-night and rolling over for sex. A habit lost right after becoming habit. Give me a month and a half and I break it, break you away from me, and leaving nothing to roll over. The warmth on the other foot of bed is nuzzling Georgia sun peak, like a pet I don’t want curled beside me.

"Shut up talking to me" -A gem from one of my students. Not a new quote, but worth including. ------------- "What signification lies in the doodle smiley, start, or heart? Whose face is that, what galaxy, and who depends on that rhythm?" ------------- "You don't look qualified enough to teach a rock to sink" ------------- "Believe you me" ------------- "Four years of schooling and they let me sharpen pencils in the teacher workroom"

The metanarrative language in all of Byrd’s prose poems veils the sequence of events and characters, yet I am really drawn to the poetry still. Because of the lack of punctuation, disconnected syntax & ideas, and lack of names, I as a reader want to “get” the works more than if the poetry were overt. The lack of usual details creates a desire to read the poetry at multiple angles in order to find a reading. Rather than accept this technique as a reading, I continue to try and “figure out” the poem, though I can see multiple ways in which the techniques work. So in a sense, the framing or metanarrative makes me work twice as hard, but still entertains.

Forms In seventy-two, future years, not past, my kids will be able to look up my census data, 2010, and determine their father was Black, African Am., Negro. But what were his great grandparents? Property, tenant farmer, unaccounted? There's some white back there. And Native American. But not enough for a scholarship, land, or denial of Affirmative Action. The 6 question form won't let me forget a past I've only read.

Talk about sadness. Talk about finding out Power Rangers was dubbed and the Green Ranger was actually a martial artist. Talk about finding out what Dubs are, cementing your black card, and never finding wet cement to sign. I never leave a mark. I leave marks everywhere. Mark Twain offends me with his rampant use of slurs, though I appreciate the realism. “The Mysterious Stranger” is the only work I will never lose. I can’t even finish the book a second time because the premise freaks me, makes it hard to sleep. Talk about falling asleep only to realize thought may never end; your conscious is a treadmill plugged in and running. What’s the point of one more day if you have eternity in soul? Let’s talk.

(A BRITTLE DAY PASSED BY) Despite his attempt at rewriting the opening scene her Georgian film took a tragic welcome. She had almost reached the vanishing point when he broke. And then there was a tremor in his chest and he pointed at nothing to say there is something broken and she loved him. There. --------------- Upon deciding to never date again, she compiled her lists of 8th grade nevers, realizing she would never do much at this rate. She graduated and never never did anything again. There. It’s written and true. Do you have something for me to do? I should have been born somewhere else. I never.

On finally making it to the end she said Can you see a dog jumping through a hoop of ribbons? Byrd pg. 70 ---------------- On asking if she will make it she said She’ll be pregnant before she graduates. Once the mystery came to light he asked was the foot leaving Eden or entering? After finally making it to the end he said I didn’t write this autobiography, but isn’t it me?

"I'm never going to date again." -8th grade outburst upon being broken up with. ------------- "Atleast I swam away from the boat to pee. Everyone else just climbed down the ladder." ------------- "The NAACP is the reason he's down there" ------------- "My teachers convinced me not to run on the playground by telling stories of kids falling and impaling themselves with woodchips." ------------- "Black, African Am., Negro" -Even then 2010 Census finds a way to offend me.

Sand as Dollar Before this sand dollar, there were photographs of them, round beige disks. Big brother saw your smile, wide eyes and this meant confidence in your find. The friend saw upside down jellyfish, holes and no crabs; this was morbid, no need for further survey of beach or ocean floor because dollar was whole and clean. Mission complete. The disk was housing, unknowing. When the dollar came home crumbled, mere quarters and dimes in hand, worthless and unpieced, what explanation could be given aside from sibling jealousy? Aside from BMWs for graduation, your Camry is just right.

Finding your father’s paper porn isn’t like beating him at Battleship or forcibly taking over cutting the grass every Saturday morning. It’s awkward excitement, resorting to using your dad’s condom stash, only to realize he’s bigger than you— would I prefer it any other way , finding a porn without the case and having to watch it to find out your preferences differ— I’d prefer it no other way — I don’t know what I was looking for, snooping through my father’s room. I think I wanted to watch my mother’s leftovers wash away though I never saw them leave, never saw their empty spaces, but nowadays, the closet is full, the dresser is full, so Dad went metro and doubled his wardrobe or my eyes are jokers. I think you usually throw jokers out for card games and I am better off blind. Then I couldn’t see my mother as gone.

I really admire two small features of “Parenthetical,” the first being the influence of color. Usually, when a poem doesn’t explicitly state specific colors, I imagine my own colors into and for the scene, but in Jordan’s poem, the colors white and red receive notice, as does darkness, smoke, and a streetlamp. This minute inclusion forced me to imagine the poem in black and white with random red, grey, and pale orange. The scenery of the poem became very cinematic for me, but I enjoyed this restriction of colors, even if it was only in my head. The restriction of colors leads me to the other facet of the poem that I admire, the imprisonment of the speaker between the club and window across the street. As a reader, I felt imprisoned by specific colors and scenes, but the speaker also feels this same oppression between the club and window, silence and deafening noise, memory and the present. Though all poems require certain specificity, the limited scenery of “Parenthetical” really made ...

"dipping your digits..." -My friend Caroline ------------- "The Texas sun was like that. Like a body asleep beside you." -Sandra Cisneros ------------- "Can you sell this item?" -The fifth question on a recent application I filled out. I'm not sure what the "item" is. I couldn't figure out if I was selling myself, selling my selling ability, or selling the product. ------------- "You look like a butt pirate" ------------- "What type of person gives a blowjob in a church?"

Free Entry 1 "You Are Ruining This Deal For The Rest Of Us" I have seen a homeless man possessing a five gear bike, guitar, and bookbag, put away his string and emo tunes only to pull out a cellular and become ecstatic about the big news of the day: a popular spot a few blocks away just opened up. He packed up and moved away from the rest of us. I told myself, every time I pass a homeless or a thumb looking for a ride or person trekking for gas, I will pick up the next one. I will freeze you in my brain and pick up the next one that’s like you, but I can’t pick you up this time, I’m late for class for work for hookups. The homeless are tied down to nothing, so I can’t catch up to them. My life will not be complete until I give some person a ride. Only then can they stab me steal my debit complete me. Free Entry 2 "Masculinity" When I told my best friend of the time that my mother passed away from breast cancer, he seized the cream walls of the North Fayette restroom...

"Samson broke down the walls of masculinity in the boys bathroom." ----------- "Your eye twitches like that of an 8th grade girl who cuts her thighs so no one knows." ----------- "I tip your mom real well." ----------- "Whether lace or guard rail, I want to get to the other side." ----------- "Her skin is turning purple with pressure"

Kathy Fagan’s strategy in dealing with clichés follows the strategy we are often taught, to inject fresh language into and around the cliché in order to personalize the phrase. Fagan does this every couple of poems, even developing an entire poem off the phrase “a monkey on her back” (2) in "Womb To Tomb Pantoum." This use of clichés makes the diction of Fagan’s poetry very casual and familiar, but the personalization of the clichés makes the specific language pop out with originality. Fagan takes the phrase “’pretty on the inside’” (19)in reference to girls that aren’t stereotypically beautiful and lets it reference specifically “the ones” (19)in "'69." Moments like this make Fagan’s poetry comfortable to an American audience, yet intriguing. If for no other reason, I continue to read Fagan’s work just to absorb how she twists clichés and trite phrases. When you catch one in her work, you expect her to twist the language into something that feels familiar, yet ...

Clowning My son’s feet grew a half every year, convincing him his feet wouldn’t stop their growth until the average man stops growing, around age 21, but when he was 18, 19, his feet pulled up at size 10 ½ two shopping trips in a row. I couldn’t stand to crush him. He wasn’t at the point in growth where he required ordering 13’s and paying more than usual, so I bought him 11’s. Now they call him a clown at school because his feet, I mean his shoes, don’t match his body type. I can’t make my son into a man. I can’t make my son, scared of clowns since he was 3, unafraid of what he is.

Five Years Separated One cold, damp day whenever we vote for the President I walked up the steps of the Fayetteville Crossing, downtown, still unsure of the possibility of changing history. I voted knowing little about any one up for office aside from the presidential candidates. Once I reached the tops steps, I saw her standing beside her mother much like I stood beside my father, and remembered the times she stood across from me at the threshold of her empty house with parents away at work from 9 to 5, ready to take me, since it was just a summer fling, making out behind bushes while her brothers drowned, drowned me in too wet kisses. Why am I allowed to see her like this—wide eyed at the sight of me? —turning 180 to face a wall of the voting poll building amid discussion with her mother over nothing, I’m sure, certainly not discussing me and how I accidentally slipped insider her as an 18 year old, pulled out wet and eyed wide, her voice quiet now in her throat, her bra covering her...

"What she could do…” When I cut my blade was hardly red— so little blood was in him. Less spill than suck, his wound worked like a mouth, and mouth and would alike drank what I fed him, my husband’s father, eyes fluttering like an infant’s, until I saw in them the sated look that women mistake for gratitude, and saw too, beneath my hands, a lustrous black returning to his beard, a pleasing heft to thigh and shoulder. What happened next was strictly clientele—I’d always been, as they say, in business, exchanging life for life. When Jason turned us out to wed another, it took no art of mine to kill our sons. I’d loved the magic for how it loved him. I loved the anger for how it did not. ------------------------ Bluest Eyes When I desired the bluest eyes possible I didn’t mean to offend. minus pain, then tears and I was good to go; I sorta look like the blonde on your bread, the blonde in your nightstand, but the mucus in my hair, loose tear duct, and newfound astigmatism defile the ...

Three, Becoming Spring On the urban grid of three PM she is off it—the bus just huffing from the curb, she lifts her backpack over her head, then brings it down dead weight, full speed to the ground. By its straps she heaves it up and down again. What’s in it she wants to kill? What’s in you that wants her to kill it? To KO the Collected Shakespeare, the Xmas knitting, the kittens, the bloody fetus? You want to help, help make it stop, help make it go. But in the ritual movement of three PM she is an errant woodwind outside the score. Where did it go, the good you believed was inside everything? She’s thrown it down. She won’t carry your faith on her back. ------------------------ Every period at :45 he begs for initials in his agenda— he claims to require the restroom, though what he needs is cranberry juice and a check-up. What is it that he pisses out, shits, throws up, or splooges? What’s in me that wants to find out? I want to save every student from anything that might do them h...

"I am that guy people cut in front of when the line blocks the exit." ------------- "I always wished archeologist would find dinosaur bones in our backyard, excavate the whole lawn. ------------- "Your guffaw goes on two chucks too long" ------------- It's not a complete ride through Temple without a Confederate flag sighting" ------------- "Blacks samples songs. whites sample genres"

Angie Estes strategy of Latin, French, and English quotes or translations distances the reader. Her book first appears difficult, but once the reader finds a comfort level with the language, the poetry isn't as difficult to enter. The foreign languages create a European and Romantic context for the work. In this sense, the nature of the quotes used, always in italics, sincerely speak to the subject matter and work as a whole. In a book about love, why not use romance languages. The quotes, along with epigraphs and sources quoted, create a learned atmosphere. Estes book marginalized you if you can't keep up with the discourse. Her English is already loaded, so with the addition of multiple texts and languages, we may struggle to keep up.

Last Words Let us cross over the river and sit in the shade of the trees. Pardonnez-moi, Monsieur , wait 'til I have finished my problem. It's been a long time since I've had champagne. Too late for fruit, too soon for flowers: hold the cross high so I may see it through the flames. Get my swan costume ready. I am about to--or I am going to--die: either expression is used. Who is it? Ah, Luisa, you always arrive just as I am leaving. Sweet Rosabel, I leave you the truth: if you can read this, you've come too close. L. is doing the rhododendrons, the boat is going down, and I'm going into the bathroom to read. More light. Am I dying or is this my birthday? I should have drunk more champagne. Either that wallpaper goes or I go. What is the answer? Very well, then, what is the question? Oh why does it take so long to come? ---------------- Last Words I hope the Styx doesn't have rapids. I don't do rapids. I don't do water. It does me in. I should have read ...

Script Folio 43 Split pomegranate, common rhinoceros beetle, Scarlet Turks='s cap lily folding back it's red lips while anthers circle the pistil's one hand: above them six lines are written in chancery script with lettere tagliate , letters cut like the long lines of pasta our parents cut on our plate, the work of two people who never met. The two halves of each letter--below and above-- are severed or sewn together by inked chain links like those that knot a fence or a stitch that unravels the whole length of a sentence if a stray thread is pulled--chain letter, chain gang, chain mail, chain saw-- or those paper links that wrap themselves around the Xmas tree: eentsy weentsy spider sidling up to each letter, each word, casting and binding in silk as if to ravel and unravel once felt the same. ---------------------------- Food Foods were eaten like the grossness our parents turned into freedom tickets away from the kitchen table, the alteration of rules we didn’t know exis...

Young Hoods Where would those boys be if mother never set down the rules for crossing streets on foot or riding gear bikes past the pink stucco house? No one would nab them anyway. They are too wily. No one would ignore them either. How could you? They throw granite at unidentified rear windows when drivers speed past the rose bushes of 125. If they deem you drive faster than 40 mph, you will hear a crack. These hoods lost too many dogs to speeders in their neighborhood of one circle and one court, 15 houses in total if you lose count and count some twice. They’re misguided hoods. Speeders thump thump their dogs. Their parents won’t buy cats, yet they have to be in once the street light buzz reaches its highest pitch. If they see hood shadows from the street light and not the sun, they might as well not come home. Dinner is already paper plated and sitting in the microwave. They’re already grounded and won’t see a meal like that for weeks. The neighborhood is so small, the big cheese d...

More Synecdoche I think slurs are more synecdoche than offensive, just a part of the impression of the whole man, woman, or race i.e. cracker only sums up a fraction of a Caucasian, much like no full nigger exists; only portions; a wop without proof, much like a wetback is not just a pair of hands or back. Hispanic heritage shoulders the world of the suits, blondes, and skirts. Skinheads work in the same fashion, though I hear they curb more often, like redheads and brunettes, though they don’t gain similar attention. A Chink, Jap, or Indian, dot or feather, is so much more, having lost their lands, diseases: the whole, gone, nothing left but a marker. I wish I could be the type of synecdoche where you gain the title of the material made from: condoms are rubbers and I would finally be America.

"It smells like baseball" -After walking out of the cafeteria, a friend said this. We knew she meant that the weather was nice, warm, and that it felt like baseball weather, but instead she said it smelled "like baseball," not even baseball season. ---------------- "I had a dream that every check I've ever written reappeared, was somehow misplaced and never used as payment" -This was my thought after a recent dream in which random checks I've written over the past year started to reappear as bookmarks and in binders. I started to freak out because I felt as if I didn't really own anything around me. ---------------- "I hate you. You are the only person I know that gets to have their cake and eat it too" -A friend said this to me after realizing that a friend I used to "talk" to was still capable of hanging out with me. He couldn't handle that we didn't have any baggage, which threw him off. ---------------- "Ses...

I am still searching for another example of this instance, but my favorite moment in Natasha Trethewey’s poetry so far happens in “Southern Gothic,” lines 10 to 15. The first two lines, “The lines in my young father’s face deepen/ toward an expression of grief” come across to me as an effect. The lines that follow this are the cause: “I have come home/ from the schoolyard with the words that shadow us/ in this small Southern town.” As I said, I can’t find another instance of this yet, but I really adore this move. By giving us the effect and then the cause, the cause bears more weight. During initial reading, we don’t know that the cause was coming first, so the strategy contrasts with what we expect. Now that we’ve moved through the effect, we come upon the cause and it hits harder than if the instance were reversed. This strategy stands out for me because I’ve never noticed it in a work before, though I assume Trethewey didn’t create it.

He had no dead in that area But we are dead down here, a broiler of mixed race peoples allowing fictional mulatto men with mulatto children to fight for the Confederacy. Down here, we’re over flowing with love for mulatto peoples, but they are the most self-loathing; it must be the black in them. Blacks are a self-loathing people. They hate themselves so much that they walk right up to polished counters, knowing they don’t belong there, knowing they will get a stare and a fight. Why else would a black sit wherever they chose on a bus if they didn’t hate themselves and want a beating? Slaves had to hate themselves. Why else would you run away so many times that they cut off half your foot, steal your equilibrium rather than equalizing your penis? A Native Guard must hate himself for signing up. He ain’t good enough to be considered dead, a real soldier, buried, monumented. But he’s good enough to take a bullet, though I’m sure the gunboat Jackson dwelled for a second.

Scenes From A Documentary History of Mississippi 2. Glyph, Aberdeen 1913 The child’s head droops as if in sleep. Stripped to the waist, in profile, he’s balanced on the man’s lap. The man, gaunt in his overalls, cradles the child’s thin arm—the sharp elbow, white signature of skin and bone—pulls it forward to show the deformity—the humped back, curve of spine—punctuating the routine hardships of their lives: how the child must follow him into the fields, haunting the long hours slumped beside a sack, his body asking how much cotton? or in the kitchen, leaning into the icebox, how much food? or kneeling beside him at the church house, why, Lord, why? They pose as if to say Look, this is the outline of suffering: the child shouldering it—a mound like dirt heaped on a grave. ------------------------------ Lesson, Banjo 19— The child cradles the forced banjo like a father with an unfamiliar, but kin, son. Nothing like a well worn grandfather would. The two of them, grandfather man and g...

"Sugar Daddy Potential" - My friend Heather used this phrase while talking about a guy she met at a required conference for work. He was 47, single, and unmarried, so his "sugar daddy potential" was kinda high. In a joking sense of course. Kinda. But no, really. ------------------ "If they know you can do it, they'll ask you to do it." -This also came up during my conversation with Heather. We were talking about how managers and bosses will ask you to do a new task constantly the minute they find out you can do it. When I worked at books-a-million, anyone that made it through cafe training found themselves stuck over there 3 to 4 times a week. ------------------ "'Pissed off' isn't a bad word; I do it every day." -A student of mine said this on Tuesday when trying to defend his language and not get in trouble. Since he pisses every day, he doesn't think "pissed off" should count as bad language. ------------------ ...

Myth I was asleep while you were dying. It’s as if you slipped through some rift, a hollow I make between my slumber and my waking, the Erebus I keep you in, still trying not to let go. You’ll be dead again tomorrow, but in dreams you live. So I try taking you back into morning. Sleep-heavy, turning, my eyes open, I find you do not follow. Again and again, this constant forsaking. * Again and again, this constant forsaking: My eyes open, I find you do not follow. You back into morning, sleep-heavy, turning. But in dreams you live. So I try taking, Not to let go. You’ll be dead again tomorrow. The Erebus I keep you in—still , trying— I make between my slumber and my waking. It’s as if you slipped through some rift, a hollow. I was asleep while you were dying. ---------------------- Partly Cloudy I was learning, while you were barely breathing, that twelve times eight is somewhere below one hundred: those multiplication tables delay my learning of your death. They are mind fog, never all...

Meek’s use of enjambment astounds me. Not only does she break lines and leave “weak” words as the last words of lines, but she often uses comma one to three words before the line break. This double pause forces the reader to move slower through a poem than usual. The poem “Courantijn River” includes instances like this multiple times within just the first stanza. A few examples are line 3 (she uses a colon, "transparency," and then a line break) and line 11 (she uses a period, comma three words later, “such,” and then a line break. These pauses don’t create a stuttering effect, but rather ample opportunity for pauses and breathing. The pauses also highlight the syntax of the piece. The commas at the end of lines are just as important as the commas at the center of the piece. This specific poem, especially in the first sentence, spirals downward somewhat like a roller coaster. The lines take you one way and then break off to go another direction, all to end with the pleasant p...

Space Sandra, the glass set you bought is bowing out, one of us keeps dropping them for no apparent reason: sometimes the cupboard door grazes a hand, sometimes dropping a glass is the only act to cancel out the risk of a splinter. The shards go everywhere, every time; we don’t find some until months later, after countless sweeps. The family is afraid that if we replace the glasses, then we’ll have to replace the mugs and the dishes and the soup bowls. We’re running out of domestic space that you picked out. This is what the dead do. They go everywhere, every time, and we don’t find them until months later, after countless sweeps. We are afraid that if we replace where you used to be, then we’ll replace the mugs and the dishes and the soup bowls, push you out of the house like an ex-wife. When will Marie Howe tell us what the dead do while we do what the living do?

“Grounding” by Sandra Meek 5th and 6th Stanza […]That summer, retracing my parents’ younger lives, I drove past the red-stone mental hospital where they’d worked, through what use to be countryside, good rock hunting, now a clutter of suburban yards, bricked fences. What I learned from my father: it’s stasis that kills, and face cards are always the ones to keep. From my mother: self is just what doesn’t leave you. What I taught myself between flights, to orbit any celestial stone is to lose everything but direction. On the margin of a neighborhood going up, the only roses I unearthed were failed partial blooms: one side ridged, the other smooth as an Amish doll’s face the maker leaves unfeatured to avoid sin, the graven image. As if God didn’t know to go any deeper. --------------------- One vacation, transcribing my earlier trips to beaches, I crept over black sand, sea weed, and shells into the ocean where Uncle Scott tossed me like an inflatable boy. A cold Great Lake: just jump in...

Build On Top Of The Dead Four years of I don’t have the time morphs into blanks routes to a place you have only been six times. The tree, we’ll call it an oak, that would provide shade for mother’s grave were it two plots up and two to the left, is gone. The flowers two plots to the right diagonally that need a dumping: thick and black slush. Imitation flowers gave stable color, but the bereaved know the sway of real flowers are appreciated, make the grave look better, convince others that see the grave through periphery that a family cares. Fake flowers never gift the living, so it makes sense. It makes sense that I can’t remember the grave site, but people I haven’t met before will believe the land was rezoned. Built on top of the dead is a Chevron, an exit with No Return Access, and public storage.

"If you're still planning on teaching, you'll need passion and Xanax." A teacher asks me daily if I am still considering teaching, as if the students I deal with could scare me away. This was the most recent response after I said I still planned to teach. ---------------- "'No Child Left Behind' doesn't mean no child left behind HERE." While criticizing what the government and school systems pass down, this comment was thrown out. Some people in charge seem to misunderstand the doctrine, passing kids that they would rather not deal with on to the high school where they will continue to fail. ---------------- "He's just so lazy; slow as molasses. If he was molasses, he wouldn't even run down hill." My supervising teacher made this comment about a student that gets A's one day every couple of weeks. He is smart, but dislikes most types of work. ---------------- "If one of us said, Andy, when Andy wasn't there, that si...

Dolls (stanza 8) At Baby Dolls, some wise guy thinks he’s funny: A dollar for the doll , he slips his five beneath her garter. She makes it come alive, it disappears, he looks her up and down upon her pedestal. A mere pronoun, she leans against the pole as if to suffer a different kind of passion, as if no lover, no proper gentleman will ever touch her. She strolls the strobe-lit stage where all must judge her. He’s loud, has drunk too much: Me Tarzan, you Jane. He bares his chest; she’s not allowed. In vain, she looks away to the mirror across the room, and briefly wonders who she fools or whom. --------------------------------- Stripped The Red Garter’s $5 cover strips me of my last ones. I’m down a wad of cash that was thick as a condom three pack but who’s daughter are you? I won’t assume you’re a mother, whore, or sister, but surely you have a father and he can’t possibly support rubbing gloss off this stage with your crotch. The creak of the stage when the music dies pops just li...

Moving I grew up finger painting and scarring the strapped load peeking over the bed of this Ford, cruise control on 75, missing wiper blade, tires that couldn’t hold a penny. Illegally in the HOV, I cut through four lanes for trouble, off the pike to a continuous left through two lights, hurried South to the curb of our faded, thirty year old house. I needed the ratty welcome mat that doesn’t welcome anymore. You fired up that fucking Ford and hauled our one legged kitchen table with four feet, four chairs with four legs, dark as dry blood grain mashed potato coated seats but maybe this trip is your first to a side of town I can’t find. Maybe you didn’t expect to rush past me amid your leaving. Maybe I still have three trips to catch you clearing out the first floor of the house. I broke the strap to that. Ate that at age 3. I must thank your forgetfulness and the second floor furniture, but how could you not employ Mayflower to cover and tow away the furnish I grew up with? Why did ...

The Missing Child Like token feathers plucked from a broken bird, the parents are separated from their daughter. The dresses on their hangars don’t say a word, and slumping like a dirty shirt, the father wears unaware his stains. What was labor and what was a given? Breathing was a given. The mother dreams she is her own neighbor who has a living daughter. The father is driven livid by men in suits and women in jewels. The parents, when they put on their masks and walk away from each other as those who pace in duels, keep walking with their faith turned dumbest luck and accordions for lungs. Her birthday chair is light and heavy, like cake flour. Or air. --------------------------------------- Teachable Moment A child can accomplish anything as long as a friend is near; can tell time vicariously through a best friend. What you learn, I know. We work like a colored lens and light. The observing teacher imagines them as attached twins, or teaching them how to read short and long hands, b...

"You speak another language when you talk to them." -A quote from my supervising teacher. During my first observation at Temple Middle School, the teacher introduced me at the beginning of every class. A student that was in 1st period Literature and 2nd period Language Arts asked midway through Language Arts who I was. --------------------------- "They use your portfolio to send you to jail. They don't test you." -This is a quote from an old news report/special called "Testing, Testing, Testing." During one scene, a professor at DePaul University criticized standardized testing, noting that you must test to become a cop, firefighter, social worker, and often as a student, though students benefit more from portfolio and exhibition work. The professor noted how they observe your portfolio or rap sheet to send you to jail. ----------------------------------- "That's before robots took over." -A Toyota commercial during the above news special...

Ridding my poetry of the explanatory “becausing” consists of using my backspace button often. I’m not sure where the style came from, but I often use a lofty and archaic diction in my poetry. I don’t aim to sound Victorian, nor do I aim to sound contemporary and modern, but I definitely like the rhythm of my poetry once I remove “because,” “since,” “whereas,” and the like. Though I like the way “thus” sounds, the word is nothing more than an ornament. Aside from rhythm, it brings nothing to my writing. I am sacrificing those words while trying to find other words in order to maintain the same rhythm. The goal of workshop for me is ridding my work of words that merely take up space. There is a different between my poetry and my literary criticism, so I need to put more effort into making that contrast apparent. I find that my poetry hits harder when I remove “is like” and qualifiers that I use out of comfort. I never use qualifiers out of purpose or intent. Basically, I need to become m...

Third World What does it feel like or look like to be so poverty stricken, so third worldly that you can’t even accept aid from other countries, your run ways are crowded and can’t handle the incoming flights? The air traffic controllers directing in planes with a walkie talkie system, the three men over in the tall grass, could bring this whole operation to a stall if they so wished, trying to guide the aid here, showing the Chinese, first to arrive, where to stand their flag. When natural disasters strike, we’ve learned to run out and hunt for aluminum goods, C batteries, and distilled water, but where do you run if the streets are littered with loitering dead bodies? Where do you run if your shattered leg can barely stand to rest beside you? Could you run if you’re three days past dehydration?

How Do You Lip Sync Your Skin What do you do with a Texas amid all the foreshadowing that warns Texas will drag out moisture with a dry heat and drag you along gravel depending on the tone of your skin? Cinema says you may open your eyes with a toilet bowl for a head and water for air, drowning in racist piss. How am I saying one thing with my shade that isn’t me, not quite what I sound like? How am I exaggerating my tone and sound, perfecting voice so that everyone foolishly succumbs to the music and believes I’m something other than person. I’m sitting outside of this bus station restroom in Texas, toilet water circling me like a shadow, clearly saying one thing with my tone; my pitch is so high that I can’t accurately hear it, even though they label me dog. I mouthed sorry and I didn’t mean to stare on the cloth of their shirts but I think they felt bring it on .

Landscape with Saxophonist by Thylias Moss The usual is there, nondescript trees opened like umbrellas, pessimists always expecting rain, chickadees whose folding and unfolding wings suggest the shuffling and reshuffling of the cardsharp’s deck; nothing noteworthy except the beginning saxophonist blowing with the efficacy of wolves addicted to pigs, blowing down those poorly built houses, the leaves off the trees, the water in another direction, the ace of spades into the ground with the cardsharp’s bad intentions. The discord and stridency set off landslides and avalanches; his playing moves the earth, not lovers who are satisfied too quickly And by the wrong things. -------------------------------------- Texts with Poets The unusual is there, boys tears drowning the world, coffins riding on top of Mercedes, men whose agitation and rumbling in the washer reminisces grumbling and commotion of shoes and pillows in a dryer; everything’s noteworthy except the amateur poet writing with the...

"It must suck to be tall; you're closer to the rain." -My friend Caroline told me about saying this to a friend one night that is around 6' 5" -------- "Geek out" -Another quote from my friend Caroline. She uses this phrase whenever a bunch of English majors get together, implying that we need to "geek out" every once and a while with people that understand our passion. --------- "I'll be hitting skins by the end of the work week." -My friend Chuck said this in reference to a girl he is trying to get with that wants to get with him just as bad. --------- "Mother, I can feel the soil falling over my head" -Lyric by Jeff Buckley in "I Know It's Over," which I didn't discover until a year ago. And just now discovered is a cover. --------- "Unconditional positive reserve" -The foundation of how counselors must feel towards their patients.

Most of Matejka’s works contain a formulaic balance between pointed, veiled sentences that I presume are based in personal history and crafted turns of language. “Do The Right Thing,” for example, summarizes a meeting with director Spike Lee, but contains lines such as “he edited me like my name/ was Pino” and “the missed free throw feeling in my chest.” Spike Lee didn’t literally edit the speaker as if he were a character in Do The Right Thing , but this language shows us how the speaker felt. Matejka likely chose this route, as opposed to saying “he changed the way I felt.” With the “free throw” line, once again, Matejka introduces an emotion often overlooked for poetry, more likely found on a Sportscenter recap. The idea of a missed free throw feeling in ones chest tells us how the speaker feels, but since a basketball game didn’t literally take place, Matejka shows us how the speaker felt.

Sweet Potato Peels I see you and though you cannot stand up I watch your destruction float around the room Flies from the garbage heap you have become keep buzzing at me as I stand and watch you sink sank sunk into that plastic bag number two I think I cannot, will not, recycle the name I used to call you Just continue to be my grandma down in Hawkinsville or Macon, whichever my memory settles on

Affirmative Action 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. ------------------------------------ -A MSN headline this morning read "Wizards G won't contest ban." I wish, just for the sake of skipping misreadings, that it read guard and not "G," which I read as "gangster" upon second and third reading. With this improv, I decided to try to write using only a quote, the story behind it, and my reading of both. “Wizards G won’t contest ban” We’re caught in a lexicon of slang and skin. Why would a Wizard contest a season long ban from black...

Spontaneous Combustion You are planning to give in, ready to give up smoking your last carton and pack and answer stick what’s that itch? You’ve wanted to spontaneously combust on this Lay-Z-Boy since I pledged to never leave your side, your sole, your chest or your small. I want to stick by you, like any good pet, to conform to you, seep into you like burnt clothing you should have removed, since I know you had this all planned out, but if this image is not beautiful then I will hold on like a burn, 2nd degree if possible, merely so you shall never return me or heal me away.

Haters What have you done, Cornelius? Never mind. We know what you’ve done: marrying white, creating a child of stuttered pigmentation from disco and chalk. In this state, anyone north of the Red River is a Yankee—ignorant of anything pecan and already sweetned. Cornelius, those same Yanks think your son is Mexican. One good thing about Texans: they know their Mexicans. Your son will still be madhousing bigotry’s matinee, Cornelius. Living in that special place for the multiple checker of race boxes, an enabler of exoticism down here. He will be the man riding the bus in tux and tie. Some other riders will want him gone in that gone for good Way even though they are not sure why. --------------------------------------------- Cold Feet What you should have done, Charles, is never minded the car wash. Instead, minded your watch, married on time in grandmother’s humid sun room, carpeted with a Easter basket grass green. Hawkensville humidity soaks cotton like caked blood of a battered bla...

"You're handicap ramp isn't up to code...for every inch off the ground, there should be a foot of ramp." -This comment, though probably factual, was a smart ass comment by a guy that came into the health center after me. I think he knew the staff pretty well and decided to brighten their day with some jabs. ------- "You are mind f*cking blowing me away!!!" -My friend Andrew yelled this at a GPS system when instead of recalculating his route, it told him to turn around...for the next five minutes of the drive." ------- "Ni**as Are Scared of Revolution" -Song title by Gil Scott Heron. More of a declaritive and spoken style, but still a song. ------- "I can't stand when they bleep out ni**er or write it with asterisk. When you bleep it out, you're forcing me to say it in my head and that ain't right." -I can't quote this right, but a few weeks ago, a friend of a friend was quoting a comedian he heard that said something ...

In both of my improvs, I tried to adopt Adrian Matejka’s technique of short, quick, and pointed sentences, as well as a consciousness for ethnicity and nationality. I appreciate his work because of the distance he creates between what I assume are his personal feelings and vendettas and the final product of poetry. I often struggle with maintaining a balance between what I may describe as art and merely a rant over injustice. I still haven’t figured out how to introduce sincere anger over subjects such as assimilation and race into my works without becoming preachy, but Matejka succeeds here also. The collection Mixology depicts frustration over issues such as colorism, but the works never disturb me with an overly emotional tone. Matejka also appropriates popular culture and music into his work, another task I struggle with and often ignore. I don’t fawn over every lyric he uses, but I often think the lyrics add depth. I’m not sure if the lyrics would turn me off if I weren’t familia...

What Is A North Fayette Black Panther When I was in the 2nd grade they tried to test my gift they showed me 4’s and 9’s and pictures of apples and asked me to learn to label they taught me labels but when I was a few years older I learned that one finger has the power to kill a bird halt a lunch room of 200 kids and silence my remaining lunches for the week. Why is it that I woke up to hand signals having more power than words? A kid can call me a cracker, taint me for life, and talk for the rest of his lunch. I can’t figure out who I was supposed to be back in those days, with school calling me gifted and boys calling me proper girls calling me cute and I replying with silence. One year they said be a positive action kid, and the next join a circle of friends. What matters anymore if a girl that smashes her peas on her plate and mixes in chocolate milk must eat the masterpiece, yet the boy who put hot sauce in his juice gets in trouble for double dog daring someone to drink it?

Ode To Fela (1938-1997) 4. Fela Dreams Of Unknown Soldiers You dream hectic polysyllabics, consolation— an open power fist put to skin— unmindful war chants, cowrie shells in dozens. You dream of coral snake: lips to horn like another new woman. To the left, a refrain of Queens not thinking about obiri’s crowd. Right, horn stacks shelling number one son Femi. Dream of making better: drums stretched to feed fire and palm. Call to arms when you found mother in driveway doubled over. Mr. President, you are arming: I condemn Democracy now. ----------------------- Chaps (2005-2006) 4. Reason For Leaving You work in hectic what work should not be situations— no time and half extra food for the road make out sessions in the cooler percent of tips passed down culinary tips direct deposit checks respect soap allowance unchipped plates. You work with steak knives in murky water, crusted pans from days ago breakfast. Soak that for a few hours. Over the right shoulder, come forks, last of Caesar a...

Boeing Ch-47 Chinook Watchin ceiling fans go round trying ta catch that feelin off instrumental, we’re hovering so long, running off the last of the gas, coming down like Outkast elevators, just me and you, rolling off the ships edge to make room for more survivors. Chinook is eating all causalities, going bulimic with survivors, begging and pleading to jump off the ship deck, sacrifice for future Boeings. They take off like elevators, patient and direct, searching for the 13th level of Heaven, I mean 14th, I mean, I know you’re superstitious, curse me for all those broken mirrors going down to the basement.

Language Mixology Half brother of the same halves, simulacra is fancy for “absent.” Like banging means “good” or off the chain means “good.” The same way off the hook forgets the phone, I’m forgetting the space between Oregon and North Carolizzay, daylight savings time and the addition of the “-izzay.” So silly that suffix, verbed blackface for black folks. ----------------------------------- Halfrican Brothers Keep Trying To Out Do Me Halfrican brothers keep trying to out do me, Blending their jaw line blackface. “Does that make you feel more black?” I’d say yes, if I knew that “black” Wasn’t the absence of white, The refusal to speak the King’s English. I’m remembering that black points, Though hard to come by, make all the difference Between grape drink and some opposite, Pants on the ground and some opposite, For non black folks.

"I'm not racist. I'm just a bigot." - A quote from a friend, said in all sincerity. Statements like this make me question the people around me. "If you can claim Angry Black Man Syndrome, then I can claim Angry White Bitch Syndrome." - Response from a friend while discussing ethnicity. "What if boobs acted the same way as dicks?" - A friend Should we be about equality? "After everything that's breakable is broken the silence expensive, the dial tone howling like my heart." - Sandra Cisneros Last stanza of "After Everything" "There is no lyric more painful than this 'He talks about you in his sleep.' That's tragic shit. Dolly Parton's song roars with need And envy." First stanza to Sherman Alexie's poem "Ode To Jolene."

If there can be only one cummings, can there be only one Gertrude Stein? The repetition of "If I told Him: A Completed Portrait of Picasso" feels so original and specific to this poem, that I wonder where a modern writer could take the technique. Is it really possible for a writer to make a technique their own and inadvertently make the technique off limits to other writers? The mere idea of writing in lower case and using odd enjambment and spacing speaks of cummings, but how can we take that technique and push it further or retract from if to make our own style? I too could come up with a sentence, write it, break it in half and reverse the halves for the second sentence, and continue the trend down the page, but more is at work in Stein's writing. The poem almost speaks to stream of consciousness. I hear voices talking over one another in "If I Told Him" and turning over the same statements. I think the path I can take from Stein's work is invisible until...

Walt Whitman "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking" Out of the cradle endlessly rocking, Out of the mocking-bird's throat, the musical shuttle, Out of the Ninth-month midnight, Over the sterile sands and the fields beyond, where the child leaving his bed wander'd alone, bare-headed, barefoot... TOMS Into the homeland permantly mud drowned, Into the sounds of pans and kids clanking, the usual filled air, Into the five years of calloused feet since birth, Welcome to the rain washed paths and fields right here, where the children sit on their porches and perches with Tom, full hair, covered feet.

How Do You Sound In Spanish? I’m not afraid to date you now, to walk into your home and court you, right in front of your father, now that I’ve completed a year and a half of Spanish. I am Intermediate 2002. I can handle the peppers your father puts in lunch to see if he can burn me away and sweat me out. I did less than half of what I knew to do with you, a full Mexican with hands so small, they reminded me of Ritz crackers. I miss the quiet of your home, not full of home speak that I can’t translate aside from verbs, but peaceful and only full of soft Chihuahua sounds, the click of cardboard puzzle pieces, and the opening and closing of an unseen screen door. I wonder if you were my Cisneros, my loose woman that I knew not to kiss, only hug, to prevent bitter writings about me.

My favorite part of Carolyn Forche's "For the Stranger": "Wiping ovals of breath from the windows in order to see ourselves, you touch the glass tenderly wherever it holds my face. Days later, you are showing me photographs of a woman and children smiling from the windows of your wallet." Lions Don't Fly Planes The crack made by our navy blue coach seats allows for me to stick my tongue out at my future girlfriend, sick of popping ears and smelling of spearmint, having filled two barf bags with peanuts and canned juice, stuck every finger in the ash tray as her mother reads a Time, and tired of kicking my seat with kickball passion. When we arrive in Minnesota, I may offer her a spot in my carry on with Floppy, or just give her my uneaten pretzels.

Ever since I read a book about Six-Word Memoirs, I can't stop attempting to perfect mine. I settled on "Sing loud into the shower head" even though the line is somewhat dramatic/emo. After finding a site about sci fi authors that wrote a few memoirs, I decided to try and craft something out of my memoir. It's more of a random burst, little focus, but for a beginning, it works. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.11/sixwords.html Kind of addictive Two Inch Space Sing falsetto into the shower head please tell me you left yourself give me more than six words that will tell of your memories, a memoir of sorts, of shorts you cursed for ripping at seam; seems to me, much to say, you have left, but sing falsetto. how else can you be heard if you can’t pierce and echo down the drain and out the… why is the septic tank outside often clogged by condoms flushed down? The swiftness lasted longer than climax put the punctuation where you wish. the only writing you shouldn’t read...

"Taking a break from being unstoppable." This line is from the show "Eastbound & Down," which is starting a second season soon on HBO, though I just discovered it a few days ago. The humor is crude and the show is somewhat a documentary style like "The Office." "I'm gonna stab you in the...life." A gem of a quote from one of my friends. I've noticed my friends get funnier as the night goes on. "They don't have the balls to be loyal." My friend Chuck said this in reference to people that we marched with this past summer that complained that the group sucked, and then went on to other corps, not realizing that the corps will never get better until people decide to stick around for more than one season. "The boss called us backs—our animal use— and I was a back in the grey Navy town." A line from the poem "Last Day at Mayflower" by Eliot Khalil Wilson. I picked this line out of the whole poem just becaus...

Ever since reading Ai’s poem “Respect, 1967,” I’ve started to take poems written initially in a voice close to my own and write them a second time from a completely different perspective. The act of assuming another voice forces me away from the comfortable or triggering subject that allowed for my initial draft. Usually I write in a young, masculine voice, so when applicable, I rewrite drafts from an older and feminine perspective. I actually tried this in the poem “Beastiality,” one of my free responses for this week. I use this practice so that I don’t convince myself that my initial draft is amazing. Whenever I use this tactic, the second draft is almost always more provocative and more specific. Sometimes I blend the two drafts to give myself more language to work with, but I often just work with the new draft. In my poem “Black Paintings,” also written this week, I tried to combine the perspective of a father and son/fetus. I think both works are stronger because of this blend.

For this improv, I chose Craig Raine's poem "A Martian Sends a Postcard Home." His poem proves to me that poetry may forever revitalize language and imagery. The poem doesn't cover any object never written about before, yet makes each image fresh. Caxtons are mechanical birds with many wings and some are treasured for their markings- they cause the eyes to melt or the body to shriek without pain. I have never seen one fly, but sometimes they perch on the hand. Mist is when the sky is tired of flight and rests its soft machine on ground: then the world is dim and bookish like engravings under tissue paper. Rain is when the earth is television. It has the property of making colours darker. Model T is a room with the lock inside- a key is turned to free the world for movement, so quick there is a film to watch for anthing missed. But time is tired to the wrist or kept in a box, ticking with impatience. In homes, a haunted apparatus sleeps, that snores when you pick it up...

Bestiality Try as you might to father a demi-god you love me because I live on this mount and cannot find another mate with palatable skin, am so prego that I can only rock on my belly. You taste of burnt cow tongue when we french but I can give moisture to you. I barely touch the floor with toenails and finger tips and continually swell with milk and tears to gush forth. All the while you are searching for a fox to rape, for most foxes are revenge seeking goddesses, presenting you with quite the plight, a horny fox searching for swans to plunder and drain. I hope you never find a willing vessel; you should forever want to climb me, mount me as I yelp “No, I mean maybe yes,” yes I have rape fantasies for you to fulfill; I’ll create your legion of demi-gods, your own terrible twos with adequate strength, but not your humanity. Our feats are marked by bondage code word macaroni and cheese orange, all so you can leave me tongue-tied and you finished and ready to go off again. T...

Since I am somewhat of a comic book fan, I decided to imitate the poem "Ben Grimm in Retirement," by Jonette Larrew. My body, composed of crumbling earth. Dandelions sprout from my chest and belly. Members of the cabbage family embed my soles, curly dock roots in my scalp. A gardener comes along to weed every morning, tugs Bermuda shoots and scrapes mosses. Like long-delayed success at extricating a seed hull stuck in molars, like scratching the ear canal. Rocks and sticks, twigs, branches, pebbles, mica and quartz. I heave. They tickle. They grind. Some rocks stick fast into the ground. Rain and snow only rinse them, like cleaning teeth. Pill bugs and night crawlers keep me soft and arable. Beetles, ants, always scurrying through the capillaries they've rebulit. Lately, a mole cricket riddles a network of bores in my right forearm, the ache in my wrist. Earthworms will repair me in time. They always have. I like this poem for its specificity that steers away from the act...

Black Paintings Father Saturn holds me up to the sunlight, a blood orange, once peeled and unjuiced, a fetus with measurable vermillion veins and pulp construction, abandoned and dried off, a veined and transparent fetus to drool over and gorge. But I am just a blood orange, I think, unaware of the wronged ex, frugal shopper who weighed and abandoned me, left this not made-in-love child on his stoop. Once, we sat and he held me up to light, du pre stained nails into me and peeled back my skin. He was rough with me, but I hoped he meant love; he’s hungry now, eyeing my innards and willing to run a parental test himself. The world is in his hand. He’s hungry to know if I taste like him, if I could overtake the world like kudzu, sprout fetuses. My autonomy tastes sweet, not O negative, merely vitamin C and bitter. He coddles me like a snow globe as I paint his chin red, yet I do not feel magical. Somewhere there is a wall in Madrid and he looks like it, for he refuses to be overthrown.

"I wish I could pay someone to pee for me" This text from a friend made me laugh. This friend can't stand going to the bathroom because it takes time out of her day. She would rather do other activities. "When Geronimo fell, he didn't say his name." This is a quote from a Sherman Alexie poem I found today called "Census." I love how Alexie involves Native American history into his works in creative ways. Whenever I read his poetry, the devices and appeals he uses appear so fluid. I always ask myself why I didn't think of using the technique.

"Stick your filthy d*ck in that tomato." Youth In Revolt "I'm gonna wrap your legs around my head and wear you like the crown you are." Youth In Revolt "There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hands. You seek problems because you need their gifts." Richard Bach, Illusions: Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

Why We Suck I am going to stab you with a straw as if you are an orange, just like the Tropicana commercial exampled, and suck so your teeth will be without annoyance as we kiss and we will for hours with immune systems hype on vitamin C, though we both have 200% left over. We may never absorb. But please, get better soon. Our history tells me we share pain like colds, without a notion of forethought and your life pains me, to hear you then read you as is, like this, the words on this page which resemble the words you sent me over waves and nets that can capture and overtake the weak. At times I wish you could cry so much that you on paper begins to drip and flow like your mascara; leave the anguish and beauty blackfaced. Only then could we commence to suck, no complications. Alethea, do you see the worry dyeing my soul an unnatural color, cutting the woven hours between now and when I swear we will see the reflection of each other in each others eyes, though the room will make the sce...