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.