I want a film.

I want a film that at the beginning introduces a woman, sitting still, on the edge of a chair. she is in a dark room. she looks at us. she says, “I want you to know, that nothing here is real. Nothing here is as it seems…”

Her words betray the next scene…

and the next…

one is a woman behind glass. A Khachaturian piece, full of staccato, plays in the background. With each hammer on she lurches. Shouting, tearing her hair. she is wretching, as if to excise a demon. but her demon is her words.

I am on your chest.

There is a brief interlude where a black woman with hair styled and majestic  rides a white cruiser bicycle. she holds her shoulders back and her chin balances, a pinnacle on which there is a perfectly tipped object; her nature and appearance makes us think of a bizarre and whimsical unicorn, however ironic, gliding along skid row.

Is this a film full of women?

Or would one woman play all the parts, including the Khachaturian solo?

Would there be women at all, or simply figments of the man; vestiges of imagination?

Aren’t we all Fellini?

2. At the beginning of this semester, I was sitting at Maude’s coffee shop attempting to write a poem, when another patron said to the waiter, “I believe that a good poem grabs its reader, shakes him, and refuses to let him go.” Since then, my poetry has strived to be anything but mundane. It’s truly arbitrary, whether a poem is sofisticated or articulate, wordy or verbose; what’s really important is relateability-if the reader is able to associate with some aspect central to the narrative-then it the poem has succeeded in tugging at the heartstrings, and from that moment on, will be significant to its reader. The poems that I enjoyed most this semester were ones that conjured some tact that resonated in my thoughts until eventually, I found myself owing the inspiration for my own writing to their ideas. “Ground Swell” by Mark Jarman, “Postolka” by Christian Wiman, and “At Pegasus” by Terrence Hayes were three that I seemed to keep mulling over in my mind.

 

3. Prior to taking this course, I had no expirience with poetry writing, save for in high school, when I expirimented with the angst-ridden teen diatribe. I was terrified to find that I would be required to submit a first assignment-albeit anonymously-without much guidance. But after the first few submissions (and greedily perusing the textbook) I realized that poetry is, truly, a tabulea rosa for the creative writer. Although I have not been swayed from my love of prose, I found that I enjoyed the freedom of this course. To those just beginning, I would offer the advice that the textbook, the professor, and all poets have offered me: read! In reading other poets, I became familiar with what was acceptable in poetry, and began to recognize a candence and style that was pleasing to me and which suited my own work. I would also suggest having one’s work critiqued as often as possible-and to read the work in various scenarios-including out loud, to an audience-for effect.

5. Because I had previously defined myself as a prose writer, I believe that my poetry reflects that end. I tend to write in free verse. My poetry tends to be extremely narrative. It is imagistic. I am unlikely to utilize any structure, but employ metaphors and similies as I would in prose. I had anticipated that this course would drastically change my tone as a writer, and cause my style to become more ’sophisticated’ in the sense that I would begin to work clever syntax into my writing. However, I think that instead, my writing grew even more into its own. I found that I most appreciated other authors who wrote poignantly and without unecessary embellishment. I learned how to write (both poetry and prose) in an acessible, colloquial style that still maintained my own flair; for example, at the beginning of the semester I submitted “What I Saw..”, a disaster of a poem in which I attempted to develop some structure while lacking meaning or content. I later gave up on structure entirely and found that my writing was better for it.

8. One of my classmates said today in class that she had learned from this semester that she was not as good of a poet as she had once believed. I have to concur; I feel as though I have been exposed to such a diverse and varied many authors that I no longer feel superior to any poem or poet. What I have learned, though, and come to value, is that poetry can be so diverse without disqualifying any poet. Rather than competing against other writers, this semster has inspired me to recognize my own strengths and weaknesses, and to concentrate on those rather than dwell on comparisons. While this was a lesson I learned in the classroom, it is something I have been able to apply across all aspects of my life!

About her, I do not know
the rhetoric of routine
or with whom she held court
in her thirtininth year.
I could not tell her address
or date of birth.
I’ve only the thoughts
gathered from Lincoln, Illinois
when she found us lying on the lawn
of the court house.
I will remember Roxanne Rude
in the waxing of June, cornflower
blue eyes and a rash of reckless freckles
across her shoulders.
I will recall until eternity
that afternoon with the wind at our backs
when she rode with us a while.
The boys lagged behind telling jokes
and she exchanged with me in great detail
the complexities of her small town life.
Of the three of us, I belonged to her in those brief hours
as a daughter, and a pupil.
Then the highway bowed to silos, farmhouses and
finally Elkhart, population four-hundred;
and she left us on the dusty Main Street.
In parting, aside, she said to me,
keep these stories, as I can see you are the one
who will write them down. And remember
that freedom can never be lost,
so long as you realize that every road is a journey,
and this journey is Serendipity.
With that, she left.

That Monday has been captured in my memory as the expenditure of light as it bounced and dappled across the platform at Waukegan station. It was Memorial Day weekend, and we had a five-dollar pass that Julian gave to a vetran as we left the station. I kept mine, and it comes up occasionally, worn and superfluous; forever linty and stuck between punch cards and metro stubs.
From the northern terminal, we left the train and rode our bicycles across the Kenosha county line into Wisconsin-the real province of milk and honey bees, Holstein, hops, corn on the cob, and men on lawn mowers; some of whom scoffed as we rode through their back yards, on a trail aft of Wal-Marts and strip malls. Between wheat fields and suburban annexs came Milkwaukee, in undulating rolls and dips and chain link fences.
Here, we tripped on the outskirts just before nightfall and laid down in a dark park, forested and capped with a skyline of high-rises. I took turns with Julian keeping an ear for the confusion of wilderness or the footing of nightwatchmen who are hungry to evict.
In the still hours of the morning we abdicated, and sat atop the Calvary above Lake Michigan and witnessed the pure linen cast of light creep up the embankment and over the city.
That afternoon we caught up with sleep in down and dandelion dander and wrestled weariness under a coven of sycamore boughs and sweet gums. I was lulled to sleep by the murmur of sailboats strung up in the harbor. And in that field near a school already vacant and a track gone weedy for vacation, we surveyed the verge of  summer. I watched the fractal drift of dust. The day was blaring. It was too bright, almost, to breathe.

fuck poetry.

(almost wrote piety).

Hm.

reluctant to mitigate.

 

 

 

….

 

the hour between one a.m., when the library closes, and two, the nocturnal creeping hour, I was suspended from my normal routine, and so I drove my little toyota filled with apple cores and blankets and looseleaf note papers and molding coffee containers out University Avenue and with lucid movement found myself turning onto S.E. 29th lane. Two deers across a dewy field. a sky waiting earnestly clear; something I forget exists nowadays. Things that have remained eeriely familiar since my childhood. And those burgeoning cedars, rotund and imposing, composing a sentenil around the property. the ranch-style gate. dark driveway gaping behind it, and somewhere a brooding ranch-house, among a bed of weeds. then the lake, placid, tar-topped. writhing with snakes. a box-set of nightmares from my childhood and all forthcoming formative thoughts stem from this location. Still, when I dream heavily, the ghosts are conjured here. I know it, when I come back to this place. and panic. because it sits, complacently, after all time has passed. If time is linear, if there have been deaths, then how is it that I can return and these things-the tangible world-sits still, unchanged? It seems impossible. If we, the mortal, are in constant rotation, then should earth to be decaying? I am not for this stop-motion. I want to go somewhere where the redux occurs as fast and organic as the movement of seasons. I want to see a mountain slip into stone, to crumble and fade, a nebula burst forth from a star…all of this should be happening in my own negotiable time.

but it’s not.

and then suddenly, in that witching early hour, I realized what I’ve been running from, incessantly since childhood. A chill runs through me, because I believed, once, that I could run from it. If I forgot this place, then it would cease to exist. I believed that the reason it had caught up to others was that they had given up, had stopped running. had been overtaken. I failed to acknowledge heredity. 

the real catch, here, is that realizing madness solidifies it. sometimes I hear it, humming. somewhere under my thoughts.   

 

 

without theory there is chaos. with theory there’s madness. yes?

 

it’s a conundrum that I see no escape from. I just want to be happy. Can I be content, and cogniscent? I threw away thoughts for a bit but that was a floundering expirience that got me know where. then I read, and read, and read and things expand expotentially; the world is too fierce to be contained…that’s madness…

 

where’s the neutral option? when can I stop making “I” statements? I just want to…observe…for a while.

 

 

p.s. I just realized the uncanny amount of errors in this text. it’s comforting. it means I’m simply tired. not crazy.

five quarters…

 

where do all those quarters go?

 

quaterly and compounding…

 

 

 

***

totally awkward things keep hapenning on 7th ave. I picked the best neighborhood ever. jeff biked past carrying his crutches.

ani: “hey! how’s it going”

jeff gives a condescending look of anguish

I realize after he’s long past that those were crutches…

I also don’t really care.

 

 

I should write about spring break sometime.

make note of the hairdresser I had today. sized up similarities in bone structure. I can appreciate a familial face.  my slovenian is improving.

I just want to say, whatever.  I’m trying to explain to these people-this very specific group of people-this supposed belief that I have about their actions. The funny thing about it, though, the conundrum that I’m unable to resolve in my mind is that I don’t really give a shit-at all-about any of it. Not just their particular movement or my dissapproval of it, but really, I don’t care either way. Sadly. The only thing that’s of any concern to me is the titillation of dissent. I could try to propose for you a thesis on the coup of contention: “playing devil’s advocate to a unanimous decision abdicates the threat of groupthink in that assemblage, etc…we don’t want another Bay of Pigs…but the problem with all of this, with me opening my mouth and blabbering my opinions…

is that they’re not opinions at all! I don’t give a shit! I just want to jostle the majority! Cajole the consensus! I could argue either side; the only purpose is to give myself a rise. whatever…

Tulsa, June 16

  

She meets us halfway

up the highest hill in Oklahoma

where I have succumbed to weak knees

and am walking, the chain guard chafing

softly against my left shin.

Her husband is sly, camera in hand,

to suspend me on this vertices indefinitely,

with the look of Sisyphus.

She is brawny, salt, pepper and bratwurst

on the tongue that sizzles with thick

German influence. Her accent lags

behind her at our heels.

She introduces us to her home:

four-car garage, five bedrooms, no pets;

and lets us wean on bottles of Spaken,

bribing us to report the condition of

camping behind an Illinois penitentiary

and other roadside attractions.

At this account, her husband curls his huge arms

across a burled chest and grunts like my late grandfather.

Near midnight, after her husband retires,

She takes us to Braums: best frozen yougurt in the west.  

(Julian and I keep the secret that we’ve eaten

at three since Kansas)

so she buys us each a cone and in the booth

confesses the transgressions of a touring cyclist:

she peed once behind a convenience store in Montana

when the attendant refused her a key to the bathroom.

She leans across the table and says,

Never be afraid to ask for what you want.

The worst response you’ll get is no…

how bad is that?

South Side, Chicago, May 18

 

Then night bristles

and its pause bursts

into a symphony of crowbars

beating at the tinted glass.

Sounding as a nightingale,

The broadsided auto

starts its chorus of alarm.

 

Then the nocturnal journey

of your palm begins

its crawl along my breadth of thigh.

If the others in the room are resting,

we will make our bed in the tub,

and pull the tap over the noise

of our flushing.

 

Or, if they are not asleep

Then we will nest on the fire escape

and play with sounds adhering

to the sirens below, of battering

and browbeaters patrolling

the street.

 

But if you are exhausted,

sleep will floor you past lunchtime.

 In the afternoon, I will find

our cramped company at work,

tinkering with the intricacies

of machines: grinding gears,

threading cables.

 

To the five we have

accrued in these tight quarters,

I will complain the change

of seasons has passed, unnoticed

outside this building. Soon,

it will be too hot to leave.

 

But I must be patient, so

I unspool days with abandon;

un-letting them from

my nervous grasp

on a pilgrimage past

those punctured cars;

dodging puddles that have fallen

from their gaping windows.