an appalling Whitman reference

Chicago, another (drafty)

You are a Jerusalem, a Mecca,

The axis of every desire so designated

With scarcely any credit,

My particular dream because I must have one

And you sit at a distance that is convenient.

Conjured complete in my head,

You wear derbys with satin bands

And old sweaters, patched at the elbows;

You are slightly hoarse.

You have great, missional, scheme-bearing shoulders.

You are the city of the great shoulders.

I have heard tales of you

And I love them.

bucket list

By way of writing something a little more cheerful. There will be no other time to write this week - four serious papers, two minor ones, teaching, and an Old English recitation to finish between now and Friday - but I have next to nothing due for two weeks after. Perhaps I'll be able to catch some of the thoughts that have been buzzing 'round for you. Still more optimistically, perhaps I'll have understood them by then. Prayers appreciated, my friends.

But for now - the current bucket list.

Publish something. (A scholarly article would be fine, a biography best.)

Learn to fly. (A plane.) And jump.

Run a marathon with Mom.

Ride an Amtrak. Overnight, if possible. (Silly, I know. There are childhood reasons.)

Walk through Robben Island, South Africa. (And a hundred other places, but this one is chief.)

Spelunking. With James, preferably.

Play an instrument on a street corner.

Never let the passport expire.

Speak a dying language. (And record it for the rest of the world.)

Speak an unreached language and translate the Word into it. (Become part of the kingdom come.)

Speak Spanish, French, Arabic, and Russian well enough to be able to share the gospel clearly. (Just think of how much of the world that is... :))

Raise multilingual kids. (Assuming the above happens quickly. And I marry someone who's multilingual, and...yeah. :D Lord willing!)

...oh, and so many other things...this is the silly list. Amusing to note just how much of it has to do with words...characteristic, no? :D

Suggestions welcomed. :)

have been writing too much theory.

I have always hidden behind certain things: my interesting hair, the wideness of my smile, the crisp edges of my prose. They are an easy identity, a convenient and thoughtless handle, the stuff cute bios are made of.

My flesh likes the easy answers, so these self-markers usually suffice, but every once in a while I look at them too hard and am weary. Another email this morning, from another professor, which wound somewhere along the lines of, "Outstanding evaluation paper! Would you mind if I posted it as an example for the class?" I was polite and grateful in my reply, but I wanted to attach a bulleted list of fallacies in said paper, the soft logic and brash leaps. Did you happen to notice the content, sir, ma'am?, or have my decisive statements claimed another victim? Is this a judgement of the arguments, or an acquiescence to the neat touch of irony at the end? Because I always smile, for everyone.

So much glitter, surface excellence. Sometimes, although the honest prospect is terrifying, I yearn for them to see beneath the nice front, to hear the ugly, hollow woosh and sigh that only human hearts - that I, in all my stratified selfishness - commit. Not because I have some desire to be known, or something else that assumes there are things worth knowing there, but because then I think I would feel less hypocritical, smell less like formaldehyde.

Apologies...in the post-summer funk, that awful, reverberating dullness that happens every year when I leave the tangible, fruitful, crazy-busy goodness of camp for a world of half academic hubris and half sloughing through waste for a piece of stamped paper. I nearly quit school every fall, to go pass out rice in Uganda or teach English in China or talk to students in Johannesburg, just do something that is measurable and good and not centered around myself. (Although doing things for that reason wouldn't actually be any less selfish, but...you understand. Argh.)

Also have been convicted of a few pervasive idols in my life over the past month or so, things that have been suspect for some time and I've just been ignoring. But I have confessed it now, said it all aloud, and just that acknowledgement is usually enough to keep me alert. Sometimes it is hard, especially waking up in the middle of the night, cold and terrified, to keep from turning to those thoughts - so easy! - and letting them lullaby me back to sleep. But then there are afternoons like this past one, riots of yellow lights and More on the radio and the sun behind opaque clouds, where He has painted love across the sky in every word I know. That reckless personalization - of the whole universe, and for me - breaks my heart every time. He is enough, so ridiculously enough, and everything else is threadbare next to His grace.

Just talking now, and I have other papers to write before midnight. Sorry to rant again.

To my friends who keep saying simple, wise things, thank you. I apologize for the mix of "oh, fine" and ridiculous theory-of-my-life I unleash on you every time we talk. You are much better than I will ever be able to say, and I am blessed to have you.

old lessons

Found this in my five-pound notebook from last semester - since it still sounds pretty good three months after the fact, :) I thought I'd put it up here.

This semester, I have learned...

how to write a literary paper. Really fast.

that violence is useful.

that you cite your own work when talking about yourself.

how to contextualize, destabilize, and analyze someone else's work.

that I am not really that good at Spanish.

that we are not nearly so advanced as we think, that there is still a great deal of ugliness and use in the world. That Roosevelt participated. That wars still rage.

that I am a pretty good writer of prose. That I could be published, even.

just how comfortable I am.

how good it feels two hours out of my comfort zone.

that there are still good people in the world, and they love me. And they want me to talk about myself.

that I desperately need my family.

that one can spend a fortune at Starbucks.

to love linguistics.

to love Moody.

to be content. Almost. :)

that pity is not equivalent to love, and rarely has any part in it.

that people will not hate you because you say no.

that everyone doesn't have to love you.

that I could do so much more.

hardly a prologue any longer

this is me getting carried away. there's a cycle of poems, a book, the rest of my life crammed into this poor thing. and it's probably entirely incoherent. but it makes me quite happy to have it all in one place. :D please do let me know if it made any sense (especially the third stanza!).

later - have redone the whole ending, and am much happier with it now. it's true now. :)
(except the title. i can't do titles.)

Coming and Going

I remember the first time I re-met you

As an adult; it had been three years

Or so. I had fallen in love, gotten engaged,

Since I last saw you, and you had fallen out of it

And lived with your dogs.

You hugged your daughter first, in the kitchen doorway,

And then your son-in-law, who was inwardly

Pleased that you had driven up without coercion.

The kids bounced off your knees, running circles, bubbling

"Papaw!" Later we sat on the couch

And you grilled me about this guy,

Brandished pictures of a new dog

On a newer cell phone that wouldn't text.

Somehow we started talking books, comparing Joyce episodes,

And we finished a sentence about being locked in a closet with King

Together and just laughed. Somehow

You are me, fifty years older and wary with

The lives scattered behind you - four daughters,

Three wives, each dropped in a different city.

You have a gentle forehead, you never meant

To hurt anyone, but your eyes are large

With cowardice. As are mine. I detect

The same reluctance to move in, settle down,

The same nameless dissatisfaction

With life in myself. You are atoning now,

And moving to Belize, which I will follow

When I am sixty as well, but I am terrified

That I will also break the people I love

In all sincerity. Surely you loved them all.

And yet our notion of love is not enough.

The guy we talked about that afternoon -

I loved him as fervently as I knew how, and likely

For longer than I should have,

But that wasn't gravity enough to hold

The universe from spinning into the night.

I am moving to Chicago next year,

As soon as I have sorted all this out,

And alone. Maybe I will get a Doberman.

Sometimes when I am speeding in the dark

It occurs to me that I am selfish,

Stubborn, proud, demanding of space.

I may have been unloveable

For a very long time.

It also occurs to me that I would be content

To drive on forever; my dreams

Are of places and concepts, not people.

Here again I am your granddaughter:

If all the rest of the world,

Beating against the bars as it does for love,

Still struggles to keep it, why should we,

Who have pragmatically ceased to seek it,

Be the ones to own it at all? Are we

Defective? Suspect, unable to maintain

Another person? Is it written across my forehead

That I will never need them so much as they need me?

But we are different, you and I; I am also a child of

Your wife, who was last in a long line

Of Weaver women, keen, tenacious,

Griffin matriarchs, dichotomies of

Diaphanous wings and harsh tongues.

I have seen my own parents recoil

And consciously eschew your legacies.

And I do love -

Many, and very well, even the dangerous

Who doubt sincerity universally.

I have misloved, but never unloved,

And never in fear.

And I would like to think

There is redemption for us both; you were

Striking out at the world, as hard and fast as you could.

That was a haymaker in a glass town

Fogged with the breath of your mother

Who never told you she had cancer.

I can nearly understand the rebellion, then the fear -

An affair, a pregnancy, and finally

Stripping the bank account of your little girls.

I can fathom the how.

But I have passed through my own waters -

I looked that boy in the face when he said

He had not loved me for some time,

And I swallowed it and spit it out and

I still love people. He even says

Every once in a while

That he misses me, and I do not break

Anything. I can still see

Sparrows clinging to fence tops like dust,

Glimpse the great portentous fact of the world that is love,

That from which you have been running so long.

I have seen it, Papaw. It sits in the corner of a coffee shop,

Sings between the stars, far outside you and me

And the shards of other souls we mince around.

It will come to you when you stop swinging.

Love will come.

dear Smorgasbord Studios,

it's been a long time.

I have missed you. Really, I have. The stress of lines, the energy of stage lights, the jokes. Makin' Eggs. Even the pancake.

And I have missed your people. Not everyone, all the time, but at least once. All of them at least once. Their faces, their moods.

I am jealous for the new people you have acquired. And the old ones who have mellowed since I was last there. I realize this year would've been easier than any in the past, and perhaps I could have handled it again.

But you understand, don't you?, why I cannot come back. I am old, and older every day, and I see too much now. No matter how endearing, or careful, or mature you become, I cannot look you in the face without my chest tightening. I have forgiven you, and re-forgive you every time I see you, quite gladly, but I do not love you any longer. You are not mine any longer, and you must stop asking. Please, stop asking.

In fifty years, when I am a little old bird-woman, I will still be hunting up good theatre and sitting in the front row, trembling with emotion along with the actors when they don't quite get it. And this will be entirely your fault. Thank you, Smorgasbord, for that much. It was lovely, and Our Town was a very lovely goodbye, and I think it is time.

Goodbye.

happy Monday!

No time to write - none at all - so here is a mid-week treat for you.

Hi, Becca. :)

i think this is what our lives look like - the whole world is stifled with ugliness, but love is always just around the corner.

this makes me giggle.

Camp is beautiful. Will write when there's time, I promise.

one prologue

to the indefinite love poem. This is what I was talking about, and in a stage I am not entirely happy with, but it's presentable and I really just want to throw it out there...getting a little giddy. It *has* been a long time since I wrote.

This is complete, as a piece, but it's not the whole story. Will work on that.

a prologue, of sorts

I remember the first time I re-met you

As an adult; it had been three years

Or so. I had fallen in love, gotten engaged,

Since I last saw you, and you had fallen out of it

And lived with your dogs.

You hugged your daughter first, in the kitchen doorway,

And then your son-in-law, who was inwardly

Pleased that you had driven up on your own.

The kids bounced off your knees, running circles, bubbling

"Papaw!" Later we sat on the couch

And you grilled me about this guy,

Brandished pictures of a new dog

On a newer cell phone that wouldn't text.

Somehow we started talking books, comparing Joyce episodes,

And we finished a sentence about being locked in a closet with King

Together and just laughed. Somehow

You are me, forty years older and wary with

The lives scattered behind you - four daughters,

Four wives, each dropped in a different city.

You have a gentle forehead, you never meant

To hurt anyone, but your eyes are large

With cowardice. As are mine. I detect

The same reluctance to move in, settle down,

The same nameless dissatisfaction

With life in myself. You are atoning now,

And moving to Belize, which I will do

When I am sixty as well, but I am terrified

That I will do the same to people I love

In all sincerity. Surely you loved them all.

indefinite love poem

Finally, writing new material! Finished something and been happy with it for the first time in...a very long time. :)

This was composed at two o'clock this morning, after writing something else about families past that made me desperate enough to write an indefinite love poem (which is not directed to anyone, I promise, just a reaction). That needs severe editing, but it may crop up some time too. As I said, I'm just thrilled to be writing again.

indefinite love poem

I have been thinking, love, and come

To a conclusion: now I know

Why people ink their skin indelibly.

They are writing, with words inescapable,

What they most fear to forget:

Names and dates, their rebellion, freedom songs,

Reassurance of their own selves, now unquestionable,

Fixed to age away on their arms.

And sometimes I am afraid, too,

That I may forget

You, your name; my family forgets.

I watched my great-grandmother believe

She was sixteen, working in a sweatshop,

And she would beg my father to let her leave

And go back to Chicago after she finished this quilt.

She did not know her daughter's name. And I,

Who have not named you, but only watched

And loved you as I have watched the stars,

Will some day forget how you are called. I cannot

Remember Orion's track from night to night.

I cannot set you

On my arm, for you are a stranger,

But I have placed you here now. Perhaps,

In fifty years, when I recall your face

As it is this morning, I will remember

I have loved you. I have loved you.

i think this is the last of it!

One more found piece from the spring of 2010. Please to note that this was not at all representative of the whole week. :) And please to pardon the last three lines. I don't know where they came from or where they're going and it's been too long to change them.

Chicago, 1

What frightens me most about this place

Is the sky. My window is on the second floor;

I am level with the street lights, the

Sodden mud mosaic bricks shifting mirage-like

Through half-blinked blinds. I look down

And out; I am only here for five days.

The curve of the street lights mimics the wings

Of carpetbagger gulls and the humped median,

Arching its back against the sky like the ribs

Of an umbrella. This sky comes down

And eats roofs in the fog; a ladder

Runs into the gray density from one roof,

Forgotten against an AC unit, like a sacrifice.

And will I learn to brace against the damp,

Give it what it wants and still remain?

Can I look you in the face, griffin city?

it's been a long time

since much of this was written. Perhaps long enough to find its way into a public sphere. Not that anyone reads this little old blog, anyways. :)

I've been sorting for the past month. Sorting and throwing things out is very cathartic for me, and always has been since that year I almost ran to South Carolina. There's just a very lot of freedom in knowing you could stuff everything you own into the backseat of your car and fly anywhere. We are strangers, after all, pilgrims who "desire a better, heavenly country," and it does my heart good to shed a few more suitcases every once in a while. (It does my heart better to read the rest of the verse, which you should go and find yourself in Hebrews 11.)

In this particular rummage, I've been finding old journals and notebooks, scraps of ages past buried beneath the health notes, birthday cards, and innumerable love letters from Caroline and Seth. (Sidey-side note - I ought to be more like them. [later - ironic in light of poems...bahaha.]) I also found a handful of old poems, all written for a fiction class in the fall of 2009 or spring of 2010. I am posting them here for posterity, just in case my computer dies, but - they all need sequels. Which I can write, now, in this age of grace. :)

Written September 2009, edited again in November, strongly resisting a desire to edit once more! I have gone back and redeemed this place already; will have to write that up. All things new. :)

St. John's Cemetery, October

I found the place myself, and it was lonely -

The hills stand back, just beyond reach;

The wind rattled by, leaving me tall, strikable,

In a field of dead sunflowers.

I had stopped to walk in the graveyard

With its marble angels and acolyte pines,

But they were not taking visitors

And the fence hustled me on,

Past a ravine where ghosts sunbathed as dusty birches,

Up the hill beyond the cemetery.

Geometry fell before me - the chain-link

Square, fuzzy bushes perching on banks,

A precise highway bisecting the west.

Windshields glinted with the mass concentration of salmon,

Muffled out by the shimmering atmosphere

Between. I sat down among the sunflower

Skeletons and watched the silence float in the air.

Also from the fall of 2009. Good in concept, but very badly done; I apologize.

Inheritance

You have succeeded,

Jessie Miller, great-great grandmother,

Deceived me into carrying

Your heritage. The family story went

That we were Amish, until you ran to California

And those you left were shunned.

When people asked about my name, it was

A melodrama to tell, like a novel,

Like fiction.

Last week, at a funeral, I acquired

A scrapbook of photos, old photos. I flipped

Through the pages, found you seated there,

Squinting at me, head turned

With the predatory precision of a praying mantis.

Your clothes were elaborate, frothy, machine-sewn.

Your husband wore glasses and smooth-greased hair.

There were no severe collars, no monotone hats,

No draft horses or cattle. Three children.

The other half of the family never heard

That they were Amish, and gaped at me.

Only I am assigned to propagate stories

Of yours; I would have told my children.

You have left me as you left your husband,

Homeless, explaining away the lies you scattered.

...this poem is going on two years old. It contains little identifying detail. And these things always have so much less power when thrown to the sunlight. So I am putting it here, where no one will ever notice, (and if you are long gone, please don't notice; it isn't my intention to beat you with this again) in the cyber equivalent of throwing it to the winds. All things new. :)

Note Paper

November has come early. The sky

Is deep and intricate, a dry rotting plush.

My car swings up next to yours,

And I set my boot heels emphatically

Onto the wasting black asphalt

Of the Eastland Mall parking lot.

I squint through the glass doors to where you are

Selling sugar-drowned pretzels inside.

Against the wind, I clutch

A torn scrap of paper, written

Earlier in the day so its intent cannot change.

As I walk around your car, I run

My fingers over the bleaching bumper stickers,

The rusty gravel nicks above the tire well.

One quick glance - I always expect

Mall Security to come whining up

When I clack open the wrinkled Toyota door.

I lean in, half-kneeling, to place the note

On the console, and I am crushed

In the smell of you.

It is like cider, onions, autumn;

A root cellar, smoky-dark and devastatingly sweet,

With splintered Mason jars in the corners.

You smell like three nights ago,

The long drive home where you sat here

And I sat there. The sky was full

In the darkness, and I carved

My nails into the door handle.

You told me many ugly things,

Growled imploding confessions of treason,

Beat the steering wheel, yourself.

I twisted my ring and took it like a priest

For a long time. Chewed forgiveness, and

Spat it out the window. I cannot believe

Myself - to think you were in there

With her, while I left you these

Stupid little 1950s housewife notes.

I slam the door, wrap my arms

Around my shoulders, shake my hair.

The glass of the mall only glints

My own face back, heavy as the sky.

The slam sends my note paper scrap

Skittering down onto the floorboards, and I see

A nest of paper tucked into a pocket,

A smiling Post-It note gummed

By two summers onto the visor,

A faded pentagon slipped into the dash,

Covering the gas gauge. I love you.

Your stupid little notes

Make my week!

You hammered every syllable into the wheel,

Rasped and chewed your lip. You turned to me;

Your eyes were green, as they always are

Before they cry. Deep and full and heavy.

I am green; I sink into the driver's seat

And press my face against the steering wheel.

I cannot create enough barbed wire

To keep you out, it molders in my hands.

Trust died in that sky, and I will exhume it again, find enough

Machismo to be the 1950s housewife.

Also fall 2009. A bit more fictional than the rest. :) This one has actually already been released on the world, through last year's Fish Hook (the USI liberal arts journal).

Ice Princess

Two winters ago, the city rang

With ice. I remember mincing home, cringing

At the trees. The day before, they were

Neat-cut bones against the sky; tonight the ice,

Relentless, adamantine, drug them to the earth.

They shimmered in the cold, gorgeous pain, fragile

And lovely as captured princesses.

Later that week, I stumbled across

My old sign language teacher. After the first

Hello squeal and hug, she stepped back, cupped

Her florid hands around my shoulders. Baby, there's

Nothing to you. I can feel your ribs.

I laughed. I've been sick. But I could feel the warmth

Puffing out: I would take care of you.

To be doomed, one must be beautiful,

Or the tragedy is only a comedy.

I found that in a book and kept it:

Only the lovely are loved, the pathetic pitied.

I strait-jacketed myself in pain,

Skipped meals and slept on Sundays. Aches were precious,

The concave hips only a side bonus.

My essence was the blue Diana skin, ribbed

Wrists, opaque eyes. I was a ghost baby,

Goblin princess, glass tree, before the world glanced

Up. My soldier came home and cried over

My cell phone fine; I melted.

Also published in the Fish Hook, from spring 2010. In the fiction workshop, we peer reviewed each others' work, and I got an amazing response from this one - all sorts of touching, empathetic notes from guys and girls alike.

Looking-Glass

It makes me wince, some mornings, watching

My frail-boned body come from the shower

Towards the full-length mirror. My ribs

Fall meekly as drapes over a window,

Keeping the chill out. I draw

The towel around my shoulders, wrap

Its hunter's orange across my chest.

With it sanitarily under my chin, I can see

My face, the steamed flush pulsing between

Full, peppered cheekbones. I did not realize

Their shape until someone mapped them carefully,

Ordered me to smile and traced the topography with a blunt finger.

I hang up the towel and dress myself as distantly

And carefully as one dresses a paper doll. Just before jeans, I flip

One thigh toward the mirror, crunching the muscle, willing it

Taut and shining as the neck of a horse.

I contract my eyebrows, assessing muscle tone

With the ruddy alien squint of an overseer

Below the auctioneer's platform. I am cold,

I could not care twice, but neither has anyone else.

The hands that held my face always dropped it.

When I am through watching the opacity

Of my invalid ghost-baby body flicker in the light,

I turn from the mirror and close the bathroom door.

Finally, a pantoum, also spring 2010.

Apprentice

for Beth

You are the birdcage waif, my friend;

I whispered rumors of keys to you in the dark.

Recite the lesson for me again.

I taught you what I did not know.

I whispered rumors of keys to you in the dark:

When you are lost, sing here, and so loudly.

I taught you what I did not know,

Yet it looked right, hung in the sky.

When you are lost, sing here, and so loudly.

You took my wispy words and hammered them true

And they looked right, hung in the sky

Now, beneath you and your dance.

You took my wispy words and hammered them true -

Remind me how you twisted from the cage

Now beneath you and your dance,

How you have learned what I never said.

Remind me how you twisted from the cage:

You were the birdcage waif, my friend.

How have you learned what I never said?

Recite the lesson for me again.