Closing Shop

Hello friends and readers!

I'm closing my blog until April. I'm submitting a portfolio of work to a contest that requires all poems be "previously unpublished." I won't be able to post any of my final drafts until after the contest winners are announced.

January will be a month of classes, writing, revising, editing, revising again, etc.

The poem below felt like an appropriate farewell. Thank you to everyone who has clicked on a link to this blog through Twitter, rbannal's blog, or by searching what to do in the event that they're forgotten their blog's url (I'm guessing that's at least 2% of my hits). Happy 2012!

The Last Thing You Taste

Soak and sink your teeth in gin,

in August memories, in sweat

and cravings, hot thighs,

and strawberry jam. Run your

tongue along each tooth,

every crescent of gum.

Learn sweet and salty flavor

because the last thing you taste

will be the bite of turpentine

and ghost peppers.

Haiku for 3rd/4th Graders

I'm teaching a three day lesson on haikus this week. This is GREAT (I can't wait to workshop with my 3rd and 4th grade students!), except that I'm not exactly a haiku master myself, and I'm expected to model the form for my students. Their poems will have to answer the questions of where, what and when, so I did my best to follow the student format, without making it seem too restrictive. I obviously modeled a loose interpretation of "where" (in the rain), for instance.

The falling raindrops
reflect the approaching ground,
before they shatter.

It's hard to stay caught up

With the MTTC exams and finals I've had a tough time keeping this blog up to date. Now with my main rig hanging out at the Apple store waiting for a new optical drive, I'm stuck without digital copies of the piece I wanted to revise and submit for this week (and, ahem, the week I missed).

So there you go.

My excuses.

Happy belated Thanksgiving everyone. I'll be back soon.

In the meantime, here's Langston Hughes to put my work to shame:

Dare

let darkness

gather up its roses

cupping softness

in the hand--

till the hard fist

of sunshine

dares the dark

to stand.

Frost Wall

My apologies for the missing week. I spent last weekend studying... and this Saturday filling out tiny scantron bubbles with my trusty #2. At least I have blogging to fall back on if I didn't pass the exams...

At any rate, here's one that seems (almost) seasonally relevant. I wrote this a couple winters ago. I look forward to the winter departure of my syntax this January. New work soon, ideas are churning, but so is my ever hectic schedule.

Frost Wall

bite hard and grind

teeth to taste to touch

to see fall

tipsy toddler

find feet (align with ankles)

over black ice nursery rhyme

catch snow smoke stink

and steam

hand follows wrist

numb

under sleeve

tug down

curl fingers and find

tight 'round cigarette

burned too close

tongue like paste

pressing luck time and into

roof of mouth

eyes dried wide

in white-out fury.

The (second to) last piece

Collaboration with rbannal at permanentstrangerladyhand:

part 1: "Love Song for the End of Summer"(rbannal)

part 2: "Morning in Late September"(fragondruit)

part 3: "A New Sunset" (rbannal)

part 4: "Crash on M-131" (fragondruit)

part 5: "on being a raindrop" (rbannal)

And here's part 6.

And We All Fall Down

Every raindrop that falls

reflects the ground as it approaches,

copies the umbrellas that scuttle

like beetles across hot sand.

As they plummet, slippery images

mirror reflections of umbrellas

and falling raindrops,

no longer remembering being falling raindrops,

reflections of reflections of

others like them, until

at the end of their journey,

they shatter to the ground,

draining into a pool, lake, stream, gutter.

Acceptance in the community basin.

Others are blessed with the embrace

of an outstretched tongue.

Ode to His Bastards: The Accomplice Falls in Love

Part 2 of "Bastards: The Terror Science Creates" (click here to view part 1, "What Worlds We Create").

But first, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (to set the mood):

"For this I had deprived myself of rest and health. i had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart."

Ode to His Bastards

I wait for you to hatch

to crawl out from ground,

sprouting, unfurling,

a city populated by umbrellas.

I wait for you and pray:

grow, darlings

you are mother father

brother sister

both one and many,

divide and multiply.

You are no flower patch

no garden herb, but still

so tender, so easily bruised.

I worry about you

your soft purple blood

what may happen in the moments

you must spend alone.

Your Doctor,

so mad for pleasure,

will sow and sell your parts

pluck

clean and dry

body to cap.

You will be eaten

and shake the trees,

put breath into walls.

You will be eaten

and like a tapeworm

grow fast and greedy.

It is only after being consumed

that you bare your teeth.

The next installment!

I'm posting my Sunday poem a little early this week. It's the next part of a sequence I'm working on with rbannal at permanentstrangerladyhand.

Just in case you missed something...

part 1: "Love Song for the End of Summer" (rbannal)

part 2: "Morning in Late September" (fragondruit)

part 3: "A New Sunset" (rbannal)

This week I was to "steal" two of his lines from part 3 and use them in order, but with the freedom to play with the line breaks. As always, I italicized rbannal's lines. Watch his poetry blog for part 5-- he'll have to siphon two lines from my poem and weave it into his own response.

Here's part 4:

Crash on M-131

The engine hisses as rain hits the hot steel.

I walk along the side of the road until my limbs go numb;

until the trees and farmhouses on the horizon blur and

the moon fades to gray. Until once-closed eyes again

acknowledge the perfection of the spiraling colors.

I keep walking because it is too late to go back.

I leave my vocal chords along the

side of the road. I am naked.

The wind must have ripped the clothes

from my body. How is it, I wonder, that

I did not notice when this happened?

I must be breathing.

I pass a hulk of charred metal and plastic.

With each step the circle tightens.

I’ve been here before.

A familiar smell mingles with that of

smoldering leather and upholstery.

Smoke doesn’t just rise, it spreads.

For a moment, I can almost

hear myself whisper, but it’s too quiet.

Why do I know that awful smell?

Then I remember.

The engine hisses as rain hits the hot steel.