Most of my stuff is on PoetryMarathon and ShortStories, but I decided to actually post my other stuff up here. Feel free to leave comments or whatever - I'd love to hear...
Note to the rabid fans: I have written a short story that I like very much. However, the yarn itself is a leetle personal for this page, so if you want to hear it, just ask. Thankees. most still, then, are the stones - gray figures sollemn with duty guarding life and fragility aginest itself, againest the moss creeping like Robert's fog up the sleek sides of its stern precision - againest the insects who lay their own new lives in their resolve, in the very symbol of permedency; guard well, oh death, from the children and wanderers who will carelessly perch on your markers, who would rip your teeth out of your mouth and fling them back down simply for a grasp at immortality it is you, oh grave, carved rememberence of things taken: You must remind us all of the futility and beauty of life, all the while crumbling beneath our very feet. eight o'clock class this, this I will remember in twenty years, when this school will have forgotten my scent after the stark gray buildings are all replaced and the trees dropped their leaves in rememberance: though the subject will be long forgotten, I'll remember the crisp cool air as I waltzed towards the hall, midst the flowers and diamonded grass six flights of stairs up and the windows leaking early light hard desk, graphite's smell clinging to my hand the sweet sweat smell of the forgotten teacher writing poems rather than listen to her and this is how I know that I am not an ivy league black-capped woman - that although I was engaged in study in this room, I learned nothing that someone else could teach me. (from the PM with Marina and Kat) #1 and running free like a memory forgotten there's only so much you can read into a raindrop #2 Lids covering your eyes: a good thing. Not only because that way you can block from your vision what you don't like, but also because they're expendable - I know sooner or later if you use them too much they'll fade from sea gray into newsprint, into a seagull's wing a beached whale an abandoned car I would tell you to save your eyes for loveier things, but they're lovely because you don't. #3 (heh, we were getting silly) melting chin dweebs: a synonym for beard? Like Play-Doh someone pressed something through your face and now it's stubby. Bizarre. If that happened to me I might do something drastic but you must be used to it. Nothing makes me feel more like a writer than washing my hair in the sink. I know that's a little odd, but really: you bring your towel into the kitchen. Roll up your sleeves or take off your shirt (naked except my overalls, I feel more alive barefoot). Warm up the water and turn on some loud music. There. Nothing makes me happier. Ready? Deep breath. Lean in It's the small happinesses and excentricities that make one a writer. The way hands become warm wrapped around a mug of something warm Never forget your tiny loves, your insignificant desires, the small beauties you know so well. We are all nothing without them write a poem for just how complicated life is, I said to myself this morning. write a poem about how the sun manages to shine through the window, even when the window is in a canyon and the shades are pulled. write a poem about how a weed has the tenacity to grow even when it's got to share the space with a tiny aloe vera and the water comes from the none too consistant watering can of a college student. write me a poem about violets in February in the snow, azaleas blooming in December. write me a poem about goldfish who thrive even though their tank is very tiny. even the plants in that tank are growing - the man at the store said they would die. oh, but they always say we will die. the little weeds and the young girls and the goldfish alike. they even say eventually the poem will be antiquated, lost the computer replacing the feel of paper in your hands. a poem is dying right now, they say. but there are a thousand poems alive in this house alone. my bookselves full of verse and my brave houseplants say that a poem is like a person: they will die, only to be replaced by themselves. and like an angel, they rise. sno ,w is a watching up see the
silence pause
for each flake
((one extra breath for each small death))
numb in mourning, my hands
reach for my mouth reaching for my hands in
slow motion
so I think maybe my heart never got older than seventeen. I think I left it in Seattle in a little house with a dog and a porch we sat on and a bus stop close by where a guy honked at Mitchell for showing him leg. later we draw a line on the ground that means yes and no. we take turns reading in trembled voices about religeon and rape and violence take turns crying when we say yes and no. i left my heart at the yes, holding myself and saying yes I've been abused left it when Mitchell fell, saying no no no there's a chruch in the gay district and maybe it's there instead, where Dawn and me and Tessa talked about Europe and vaginas and beauty maybe it's in that pizza place where i stared at myself in the mirror before i remembered it was me. i borrowed Dawn's wife beater and Tessa's bandanna and am proclaimed butch and a babe and we go out to do what I don't remember. maybe my heart's in that apartment we shopped for, the one too small and with its own baby ironing board but oh it was in Seattle where it stayed, and where the part of me that goes wherever it will stayed. nobody tries to explain exactly how is the difference between an average rollar coaster and a missed period; there's a peculiar lurch similar in each, different in both. nobody even eludes to how all of the body's subtle inbalances suddenly become an antigravitational influence how our compasses all suddenly demagnitize and we can no longer point our ships in the direction of home. since nobody told us where home is. a new set of directions loom ahead and they all center on your midriff, where for years your monthly explosion and nothing else has made so much of a murmur; now you suddenly are aware of every whisper. and you end up sitting crying with or without blood between your legs. for all my girls who know what I mean “lookit” she screeches, “he can’t fly.” “that birdie can’t fly!” while the people around her turn;shuffle;lookdown she hops. eyes ablaze hair wild. she follows her prey. tries to make the unyielding wings burst into flight. we look down nobody likes a crippled bird. flopping down with my typewriter: exhausted. spent the morning mixing our possessions like a fruit salad: my books, honeydew melons computer cds bedsheets bubble bath in our honeycomb wonder of piled boxes is: our home. our home - a tornado appears to have come, and left piles of that amazing crud that is homeless, and yet accompanies every home. her stuff is heavy, did you know that? (my back does.)(I bet mine is heavy too.) come and I'll show you - look, we haave our own shower curtain. funny what's exciting
if it belongs to you
(you together) yes of course womanliness begins with the curve of your hips any sap can tell you that, hips are an easy defining point - but being female is more all-encompassing than anatomy: part of the defining of a woman is the transformation of that body and the people around her. I have never met a grown woman without a story of evolution - not of her body as much as the perception of it. An awakening moment. Let me show you the scars invisible: where eyes pierced my breasts, where their stares tried to lower my head, where their snickers made me wish I had worn baggier clothes. Find me a woman without stories like this. (this is not the defining point of woman. This is a step in becoming one.)(there is no defining point in woman.) Evolve; learn why you have hips. Discover that infants fit perfectly on that shelf. That lifting heavy objects is ten times easier. Learn that if properly applied, you can knock someone over with them. Learn that a vagina is convenient if you ride horses, bikes, if you get kicked. That with the right partner, your cunt is your best friend. If you need to comfort someone, having a space between your breasts is nice. Learn that hips are for dancing. an image: woman, bent over, she clutches a stuffed animal. but a poem isn't photography; it neglects to tell you that she wears a dress but has no hair, bathed in sun she draws into herself. Castle in the ocean. but photography isn't a poem; it will not tell you what her eyes are thinking, what her mind breathes. Photos don't tell you the dreams she wishes away. she dreams of violets, her dog, a fight that she wins, a fight that she loses, her fist connecting with a man's face, two women kissing. Capture this photograph: arms spread, she holds back the sea. careful, she says tucking the letter in the pocket of my overalls. The ink runs when wet. Not until later do I find the yellow-purpley stain dried now (she'd folded the corner down, so I wouldn't see) saving her tears for later as she always does. A Song for Greyhound I'm stiff from sitting still too long the flashing landscape has become boring: Montana appears to be entirely made of rocks. I've read every book I brought with me, plus some of yours. You fell asleep back in Idaho so I can't even play with you and I don't want to talk to anyone else because they're big and loud or old and creepy and remind me again why we decided to come? Because I'm hot and stiff and cranky and I want to go /home/ even though home is what we were trying to excape and all anyone can do is sit back and try not to wiggle and maybe try to go back to sleep and hope we're almost there. Politely let's play pretend and play that I've only met you once or twice and that you don't know me any better we can start our conversation like ordinary people; with 'hello'. and then I'll ask you politely how you're doing, and you can answer you're fine, doing a bit of this and that. and we'll pretend you haven't ever seen me pick my nose, and I don't know that you never clean your bathroom we can play I haven't ever told you I hate you, and you haven't cried on my shirt until it was wet. when we have to go, today we can say 'it was nice seeing you, say hello to your girlfriend,' and we can even pretend-hug each other goodbye, like friends. I can play the forget game if you will too. (but sometimes, after you've left, I wish I didn't have to) As far back as I can remember My mother has told me stories Of her years in high-school. Stories of her boyfriend, Rick Best friend, Lynne Classes, yes, all those high-school things And her girlfriends, the ones you talk to after class. Some of them, when their names came up She'd smile a bit more, Mention their hair, or their eyes Or how funny they were - just a bit more than she did with the others. I never thought anything of it. But my mother is turning out to be A woman full of secrets, Stories, mysteries Things I am learning to appreciate now. And I wonder, now, about those girls Since I came out a few months ago. Because I remember her telling me, then, That I didn't seem gay, She didn't think she'd seen it in me as a child really silly arguments - and what was the point of the arguing, anyway? Maybe every newly-liberated person does this This questioning of other's orientation But I think of my mother's claim That all women are bi And I can't help but question her motives (is she hiding behind that logic?) And I remember her stories Of beautiful, intelligent women And I can't help but wonder what she thought (did she love that first boy?) I don't question her love for my father - this is obvious And I don't question the strength of her choice - she is as much herself as I ever saw anyone But I think of the stories, and I just can't help but wonder. It rains For seven months of twelve here When it snows Everyone is out, frolicking In the half inch And when the sun comes out You can see people basking on their roofs Shivering in the 50 degrees. When A homeless man was murdered They followed the story in the paper for months (still have a rally on the anniversary). And the bad section of town Is considered such because The houses are dirty and there's couches on the lawns. Last year, A measure on the ballot To make speaking about homosexuality in school illegal Didn't pass, thank god - But it was 49% to 51% about it. Though We have a university - we push education, We cut the art program From the schools last year. All the classrooms have computers, but the music program stays afloat Due almost entirely to one man's stubborness. There's one good vegetarian retaurant and one guns and knives store. The hippy clothes store exists Next to the Christian supply place. (this town also sports a Starbucks, Safeway, Winco, Bi-mart, Dari-Queen, and OfficeMax.) This is Corvallis. I grew up here. It amazes me that such a place could give birth to such a person. It's hard not to outgrow this town. she is a spot of gold in my heart somehow she found out the way to wiggle her way in (through the cracks of my soul) and find a home (how is a mystery - after all, I wasn't exactly expecting anyone) I remember seeing a photo of ancient Greece where the trees have grown back through the stubborn streets and turned the bright paradise into another - equally as bright, but richer, deeper. The stones of the street once so orderly turned on their heads rearranged to make way for the new beauty. I want somehow to erase all the forevers that somehow turned out to be Not quite as forever as I thought. I can't do that (not really) So I shall have to be content with knowing some forevers are only meant for the moment and others have a farther mileage than that (the only problem being telling which is which, I suppose.) (all I can do is hope the forevers I truly feel are felt by the other half of the forever.) (this isn't actually a poem. It's a First Contact (with aliens) story I wrote for school some time ago. But I loved how it turned out.) You ask what it was like, to feel a presence flicker in your mind not
your own?
Hah, I say hah,
you can never know.
But there is no harm in describing the sensation anyway. /You cannot
touch it for yourself./
It begins like a butterfly's tickle,
feathery and l i g h t
gently kneading the fabric of the part you dare to call
yourself
The edges of your being play with themselves,
flirting with the knots
the edges
/You begin to lose/ that unspoken purpose
of thought
The ends of yourself fray
Your being spreads out
Without knowing.
As the threads ravel a n d split,
Another
enters within the leftover space
And fills you with
lo /ng/ ing
For what c a nno t be
what never was to start with
and has no place
inside your s k i n
People who don't
know
or see
or try to
/They/ can call this /m a d n e s s/
Let them try, I say,
To spend their days full of
skies they have n ev er seen
beasts whom care not
for our
mortal thoughts
Feh. First contact. The first contact is too ancient for anyone to re me mbe r NBTSWikiWiki | Recent Changes Edited 27 times, last edited on April 4, 2002 by 205.187.203.42. © 2000 NBTSC Webmasters |
