Draft Revision Week 12

Riff off Mark Doty's "Broadway"



Under the faded tin roof
beneath a fistful of stars 
a coyote wails in the distance.
Far from this moment, but close at hand. 


Desert sage sways under 
the stiff and cracked heat, 
its thin pink fingers caught
in splintered door frames, 


opening and closing, 
those tiny knives, 
a lifetime of snagging
elbows and knees caught unawares. 


The store front groans, 
its faded tattoos 
whisper the age of 
its oak skeleton. 


Glass eyes covered,
blinded with old type print, 
rusted nails turning its grin 
to a pit of abscesses. 


Vultures perch along its spine, 
waiting, always waiting, 
their stomachs roused
from their delicious sloth. 

Draft for Class Revision Week 11

1993


I believe now in the owls that roost in our mortgage.
Your mother's bone china grating against the joists,
its once pristine blossoms, now grotesque, slipping, going Rorschach.
Your father's police uniform still sharp in the last gasp of its cellophane.
My mint stacks, Roger Clemens atrophies in that cardboard mausoleum.  
These things, that burn between the planks,
 have hardened and moldered for years.


I believe in the olive oil hissing on our stove,
the flayed tomatoes, their skins soaking the grout.
I love the quake of our bodies. Your hands
smelling of tea, Sweet Aftons, and Summer's last gargled ache.


I believe in the hunt for keys, while another
gentle minor third slips itself into yesterday.
The strings of my hands twinged. Where are we now,
after the glassy shriek of night, my shattered arm rejoined,
the silt of my wrist glazed in holy steel?


Children half our age drape our skin. They're laughing at us.
They don't believe we'll last the sweltering decades,
because in that quiet town from our Technicolor memories,
postmarked Alexandria, 1984, children half our age
seethe over fabric softener and Chinese take out.
In the space between yesterday and today,
cords tumble on February's Berber slab.

Expansion Week 10

Taken from week 9 Calisthenic
 Trolling for Alligators with my Grandfather


June 2009. 15 miles north of New Orleans.
Like wraiths, we skiff across the womb that birthed us.
Gnarled cypresses dig their cuticles into the sweltering decades.
Our nylon livelihood nuzzles into their contortions.
Steely wolverines shiver in that belly of wrought sheet metal.
The tags salivate in their denim lairs,
 hungry to finish what the rifle will start.
The blades idle, sputtering and wheezing,
the way my grandfather drank himself into an elegy
the bayou will never stop revising.
The three quarter inch high test line trembles,
quivers with promise, a mass of scales and fear.
Behind me, the panoramic lens understands all of this.


Expansions:
Idling for Rommel in the Cradle


June 2009. 15 miles north of New Orleans.
Like wraiths, we skiff across the womb that birthed us.
Gnarled cypresses dig their cuticles in,
peeling back the sweltering decades.
Our nylon livelihood nuzzles into their contortions.
Steely wolverines cower in that belly of wrought sheet metal.
The tags salivate in their denim lairs,
 hungry to finish what the rifle will start.
The blades idle, sputtering and wheezing,
the way my grandfather drank himself into an elegy
the bayou will never stop revising.
The three quarter inch high test line trembles,
quivers with promise, a mass of scales and fear.
Behind me, the panoramic lens understands all of this.


The camera sees this, just as my grandfather did, 
years before his mind slipped into the same murk 
where this year's Christmas simmers. The gnash of 
his oars against the braided roots, his tired pistol 
edged into the corner of his splitting boot soles. 
The keel, knifing its way through those schoolroom windows,
draft papers and German advances. 


[will expand further]

Poem Riff Week 10

WCW "The Red Wheelbarrow"

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

College Degrees

Everything and no-
thing

hinges on scraps
of

stiff paper under
sheets

of aching cold
glass.

Junk Yard Quote2 Week 10

By 1980, 100,000 Pac-man arcade machines had been sold.

80's Tech, Modern Marvels.

Junk Yard Quote1 Week 10

Ladies and gentlemen, without a safety net
I shall now perform a 180 flip-flop
I shall now amputate, I shall now contort
Because down is the new up
What if I just flip-flopped?
Down is the new up


Thom York, Radiohead

Pedagogy Post Week 10

I've been considering a question that Dr. Davidson raised during our last class. Why is it that we have a division between those whose writing/drafting etc resembles some stretching Ginsberg ramble,  or something out of Whitman? Why is it that others craft poems with very curt and compact stanzas resembling William Carlos Williams? What does this mean in terms of a draft as a whole? I have a tendency to align with the latter camp. I would speculate that this stems partly from the fact that very early on in my poetry studies I uncounted WCW's "The Red Wheelbarrow." I was, and still am astounded that such minuscule works are capable of bearing such a hefty amount of weight, as it were. This isn't to say that approach adopted in "Howl" is less valid, but I do think that it naturally carries this weight easier, and perhaps with a bit of a veil of sorts given its staggering length. It's my impression that poem's such as Williams' must carry this weight "raw" and "openly". I hope this idea makes sense. Surprisingly though, in high school years before I knew the first thing about poetry, I found myself favoring very tight and controlled pieces when I would dabble in what I thought was poetry at the time. Is this distinction something innate in every student of poetry? Is it a learned practice? What role might my early exposure to haiku play in all of this?