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Monday, March 28, 2011
A Good Life
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When Our Souls Dance
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Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Ruth, March 22
Here is the only one left of the NAMI booklet poems that I need criticism for. There is another, but it's not ready to post. There's also another, "Son," which I might use for a workshop. There's a deadline to submit a 20 or fewer line poem soon.
As usual, the italics are phrases I'm not sure about, the slashes are choices, one or the other.
As usual, the italics are phrases I'm not sure about, the slashes are choices, one or the other.
Marking Mother
We walk beneath the hospital
in an endless corridor
lined with closed doors
and waiting patients,
a surreal dream.
Your frail form is so insubstantial
that when I hold your arm
I have to use all my weight
to keep you from floating away.
I tether you to me
as I was once to you.
There is a moment of silence
when the others,
solid and alive with hope,
suck in your spectral/ephemeral presence.
Then they return
to their hushed, nervous conversations.
Not here for levitation,
but radiation,
the doctor tattoos
your pale skin
with intricate hieroglyphics.
He ornaments your cheek and neck
like a magical incantation,
a comfort,
until he etches,
an X at the center of your forehead.
Son
Son
I pushed him head first into the light. He
squinted his eyes and moved forward, wore holes
in his overall knees, ran barefoot to the sandbox,
shoved through the weighty door of school.
He was a planet in orbit around me; I wanted
to shine on him like the sun. I sustained him
with whole milk, day camp, the World Book.
He grew so strong and fast I couldn't keep up.
He fueled his body with his own choices:
Pizza, beer, smoke. He wore baggy
jeans, his hair hung in dreads, girls' high
voices spiraled from his cell at two a.m.
One windy day, he spun away from me at light
speed, his childhood and my motherhood
crammed in his ragged backpack. Unfinished,
I meant to give him courage and spirituality.
Now he hurtles, directionless, away, away. As my
light dims I must trust he'll arrive in the shining
place he needs to be. If he travels far enough,
he'll see me, like a star, long after I'm gone.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
Ruth, March 20
A rewrite of an older one. Italicized words with slashes are word choices. I like "tribal" and "blood" best but don't know if they fit, especially "tribal," and especially in the second choice for last stanza where they come before the "family tree" phrase, though I prefer this order for the last stanza. Any other comments also appreciated.
I just had another thought. For the last stanza I could add another line, being able to say a little more about the "trouble," then end with a one line stanza, "She shuts the door firmly behind her." What do you think?
Happy first day of spring
I just had another thought. For the last stanza I could add another line, being able to say a little more about the "trouble," then end with a one line stanza, "She shuts the door firmly behind her." What do you think?
Happy first day of spring
Granddaughter at Sixteen
A peal of laughter seeps through the wall, whirls
dust into a golden galaxy in the window's light.
Inside, her room is a kaleidoscope of crumpled
clothes and incense, an ever-present phone,
psychedelic sketches hanging askew, a patchwork
of red textbooks and pink paperbacks.
She pliés, plucks a bright rag from the floor,
slips it over her slender neck, and it falls,
polished silk, to sheath her lithe frame.
Her flexible backbone twists her upright,
she glissades to the kitchen, cell to her ear,
a rosy shell. She's all creamy-skinned ease.
She bows before the refrigerator and rises
with a bowl of chili and sharp cheddar,
spoons it through the perfect coil of her mouth,
and still her skin is scented with honey, her breath
a confection. I'm astonished this is the surly girl
who threw herself on the floor wailing at fourteen.
She moves to the den with grace, her arms sweep the air
as if pruning the past, praising what is yet to come.
She opens Pandora on the Dell, turns the volume
to a high, throbbing beat. One raised eyebrow
expresses her boredom with my company. Leaving
the music to pulse, she spin-steps back to her room.
She shuts the door firmly behind her. Tendrils
of my DNA spiral in her cells, filaments of ancestors
incandesce her flesh, and sometimes she half-laughs,
a gesture, her mother's and mine, that climbs down
the family tree into the future. I foresee challenges
for her, troubles that flow in our tribal/inherited/familial/genetic blood/veins.
or
She shuts the door firmly behind her. I foresee
challenges for her, troubles that flow in our tribal/inherited/familial/genetic
blood/veins. Tendrils of my DNA spiral in her cells, filaments
of ancestors incandesce her flesh, and sometimes
she half-laughs, a gesture, her mother's and mine,
that climbs down the family tree into the future.
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Ruth Here, March13.
Okay Anna, here's the deal. I wrote a nonfiction piece about an incident with my son and then a poem about just the first part of the incident a while back. Now we are making a booklet of writing for NAMI's April meeting. I was asked to shape the latter part of the story to match or go with the poetry that details the beginning of the incident. Well, it has turned out very long. There is a Part 1 (the old one) and Part 2 and 3, the new ones. I think this is too long and not engaging. Also since Part 1 wasn't written with Parts 2 and 3 in mind, it doesn't quite fit together.
I guess I'm going to have to post the whole piece here. What can I do to make it more engaging, make more sense if it doesn't, etc.? My idea is to have each of the three parts have the same number of stanzas. I'm hoping there can be some cuts from the newly written, raw, Parts 2 and 3 and just make the lines shorter, but still keep the stanza structure.
This is a lot at one time. This has to be done soon and I'm not sure there's any other way to present it. Here goes.
From Ruth on Mar. 19: I removed this so you could look at something newer, Anna.
I guess I'm going to have to post the whole piece here. What can I do to make it more engaging, make more sense if it doesn't, etc.? My idea is to have each of the three parts have the same number of stanzas. I'm hoping there can be some cuts from the newly written, raw, Parts 2 and 3 and just make the lines shorter, but still keep the stanza structure.
This is a lot at one time. This has to be done soon and I'm not sure there's any other way to present it. Here goes.
From Ruth on Mar. 19: I removed this so you could look at something newer, Anna.
Positve Outlook
| By Debbie |
 I have depression It can make me sad Sometimes feel blue At times it makes me hurt But no matter what it does I have depression It doesn't have me Many claim to suffer from depression But I can fight It can try to hold me in its grip No matter how hard it struggles I am stronger and more determined I don't suffer from depression It suffers from me |
Sunday, March 6, 2011
Ruth, March 6
Another one recently changed as per some advice. I'm not sure. The advice was to use the shoe/foot/leg metaphor more throughout the poem--and to bring in a modern pair of shoes. As usual italicized words with slashes represent choices I'm not sure about. Word choice in one place: I like 'prepare' because it echoes 'unaware' but 'strengthen' is a stronger word (by definition!) Too many 'ings' in the last stanza? I could change that, e.g. "will bring," "that vanish", "that glint?"
1953
Summer’s over though the air still glows.
You can’t hear our shrill laughter, smell the Brylcreem
in the boys' hair, or see our shiny leather shoes.
In unswerving rows, a pack/array of nine-year-olds
gazes out of our class photo into the future.
We don't know that the straight
path on which we'll set off into adulthood
will be skewed by a sheer of wind,
that fifty years will pass between two breaths.
We'll look down and see we're wearing nylon Nikes.
But in 1953/as children in the schoolyard, we look at a sky
that is blue and cloudless, at a sun that will last
forever. We smile into a channel of endless
brilliance, unaware that half a century later
someone will look back at us with sadness
for the smudges that obscured the light,
with regret for who we became
and who we didn't. We'll lament the loss
of choices replaced by outcomes
already curled up inside us
like muscles fibers ready to swell
and prepare/strengthen our legs for the journey.
The child I once was looks forward
with guileless eyes. His unfolding bones
don't yet ache from what lies ahead.
He doesn't know that his new shoes
will scuff in the schoolyard/on the sidewalk,
reek of Shinola, that his heel will blister
where the stiffness rubs,
that it will fester for months.
He doesn't yet suspect dusk will breach
his skin and enter him, bringing with it
an array of chaste faces, voices
vanishing in the wind, and wing-tips
glinting in the diminishing light.
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