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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...