Improv 2, Week 3

“Colloquialism” by Adrian Matejka
Being a color in Texas is to wake stressed
from being. To wake in a panhandled lethargy
of dust and heat, a mishmash of hazards
flashing a downpour.

Bad to be black,
worse to be a mixed indetermination.
--
Being a color in Germany chills like
mosquitoes in amber. I knew three
blacks, all from Africa. Most thought as
Americans, we were racist. They
didn’t know it’s hipper to be racist
over nights of broccoli and condors, behind
javelin glances and incomes. The only
whiteface I ever found was at Barnums.
It’s savvier to hate gypsies, Turks, and
the Mexicans of thirty different countries,
their eyes stewing in your diaphragm. For
Christmas a friend sent us a card with a
black baby Jesus, no Sol Invictus for your
felonies and chuckles of niggers
born in barns. Why hate a black, when
a black can hate itself? Verdicts and
deadlines, whispers of slaves and Klans.
Have you found your spunk yet? Ich
weiβ es nicht. Was ist spunk?

Junkyard Quotes, Week 3

You don’t always have to fuck her hard. –Tenacious D, “Fuck Her Gently”

No tears please. Such a waste of good suffering. –Hellraisers

Have you found your spunk yet? –Nikki
This sparked a conversation about the multiple connotations of the word spunk. In this context, it means “hipness” or “style.”

Don’t touch the power breaker, you idgit. –Matt
I like the sound of the word idgit, and it’s replacement for retard (or ritard for those The Hangover and Freddy Got Fingered fans) or imbecile.

Jesus Christ, I wanna lick your mind. –True Blood

Improv 1 Week 3

This improv attempts to simulate the work of Adrian Matejka in his collection, Mixology. However, rather than modeling after a single piece, I aimed to replicate the tones, rhythms, transitive styles, and subject matters discussed and presented throughout the pieces.



Thanks Guetta for your respect,
though Damn, youse a sexy bitch
rang too much of sangria and Barcelona,
where I watched a prostitute blow,
her stilettos dodging dog shit and
club flyers. We danced on tabletops to
remixes of remixes and outdrank our
direction, voices slathered with rum and
tapas, and spoke of Hotlanta—its
Goose and zoology softer than
cotton. My mom once told me
Niggers have bugs in their hair. Twines of
agendas and melodies exhaust
through the room, smelling of
eyeliner and gondolas. Tempos quake
to the booty drop and nylons of the season,
and lyrics anger lions and butanes.

Freewrite 2 Week 3

They tango above, the swell of
your mother’s allowance
basking over your crassness.
You sop disinformation with
rye and sharecroppers.
Reels align and spool towards
his anchovies as he chivvies her
in a stackhouse . Your overexertion
liquefies into an ambush and the
lollygag screeches for the undersurface
of your domesticity. The jargon of
the days fades to grammar of nonfusion and
the species overtone of inquiries and alcohol.
Financial wrecks and passive showers
infect a charter’s birth. Treat yourself to
comas and haircuts, squeezing shelters from
lawns and dustbins. Nickels peel potential from
exits, acting, and posters.
Don’t touch the power breaker, you idgit.

Freewrite 1 Week 3

Pet Euthanasia
When do you euthanize a pet? For my writing professor, it’s when you want to piss your readers off. To my sister, it’s when cancer grates a body and livers fail. When dogs fight and clients don’t pay. Intra-muscular Telazol and six minutes to fade. Leering over, the vets pierce the skin soft as mushrooms and inject the pink juice. Too much Euthasol for you? You grab the splintered foot, shave the patterns and press into a paw mold. Try not to overheat the kiln, or you’ll have to make another Christmas ornament from a boarding dog. Toss the body into the fridge next to Tuesday’s sandwich and the Cerenia. Scrub the table with Roccal-D, sign a client condolence card. When the pudged cremator comes, laugh every time he says It’s a dead dog in a feigned British accent. Wonder why poor humor helps him with his job. If carrying carcasses to the oven every day helps him overcome death.

Improv 2 Week 2

A portion of Mark Halliday’s “Muck-Clump”
My wife was being too busy around the kitchen one morning
I think to give her the sense of being on top of things
and when I poured a bowl of Shredded Wheat Spoonfuls for Devon
my wife bustled over and said “oh Devon likes to have more cereal
than that”
--
My wife was too busy around the kitchen—
it gave her the sense of being on top of things.
Scourge the pots too large for the dishwasher,
slam drawers of forks and pizza cutters,
Lysol counters and that one corner
where Grandma fell last night, its
rubied grout winking under track lighting.
Her fingers trace the tile veins that
impressed foreheads and soles, and the
memory glows with the her own reflection in
blood and aneurisms. She sacrifices Grandma’s
favorite coffee cup to the sheetrock and shards
shatter the floor and spice rack, slowly revolving.

Freewrite 2 Week 2

The inside of the egg
held bones I roll
between tips and thumb,
watching the sac roll over
spine like so many eyes.
My cake flattens as I
dismember tail from head,
joints popping like Legos.
The Kenmore’s cleaving cold
whispers silence to me,
and I ward the body
from my dog’s tongue,
dripping water on my toes.
I shovel near tomatoes a
burrow deep enough from
Bentu, and my son wonders
Are eggs chicken menstruation?
I ponder thoughts of veganism
rather than my son’s thirteenth
birthday and graves. The tomatoes
bulge their skins and snap
vines—a placenta better than
any Miracle-Gro.

Freewrite 1 Week 2

In my front yard lingered twelve
neighborhood kids, eager for baseball.
Run to hat then corner house, graze
pine tree and barrel into Joe, the catcher.
My mother smashed the ball into the neighbor’s
bathroom window. To his curses, we found
another and three innings later, the chalk board
filled with the dust and cheats of the generation.
Evan volleyed the ball into the sewer, and I,
the smallest, wiggled past the upturned manhole
to swim for it. I waited for a crocodile to snap
my hand or worse, the ball, but rather only found
the stinks and secrets of the neighborhood lingering
under our houses. Protests forced me to shower,
and my team, without me, faded.

Improv 1 Week 2

A portion of Carolyn Forché's “For the Stranger”

There are a few clues as to where
we are: the baled wheat scattered
everywhere like missing coffins.
The distant yellow kitchen lights
wiped with oil.
Everywhere the black dipping wires
stretching messages from one side
of a country to the other.
The men who stand on every border
waving to us.
---
There are a few clues to where
we are: Pine trees lined like corn stalks,
their feet shivering with no brush.
Cranberry cotton fields as beautiful and harsh
as snow. The townspeople—white, withered—
trail in flocks to baptisms and daily sermons,
praying for their harvests below. Pumping
wells and frying corn, they gaze at the
minstrels on their wall, reciting Little Black Sambo
for grandchildren. The sand under their feet and in
porch cracks only fed the onions and pecans,
as the fat fingers of vidalias reach for Toombs.

Repsonse 1 Week 2

Carylyn Forché’s “For the Stranger” highlights the travels of two forbidden lovers—forbidden for their heritage, culture, and marital status—as they travel through a Central America occupied the American military. The two lovers “have [. . .] nothing” (49) and “neither [. . .] / really knows” (3-4) which city they intend to travel to on the train. The piece utilizes largely subdued verbs, such as say, knows, touch, listen, slows, find, to have, and to be. The tone of the language creates inaction for the characters, displaying they are beyond the actions of the military, their country, and themselves. Their passive natures by the strength of the landscape: trains slip and reach, wheat bales scatter, lamps are wiped with oil, wires stretch messages. The language of the landscape creates an active power that subdues the characters, perpetuating their inactiveness and indecisiveness. Furthermore, the language of the poem, though bleak and subdued, allows the descriptions to overpower the verbs. Some of the stronger passages include, “on your tongue like a fruit pit” (2), “the wind’s broken teeth sinking into us” (9), “the coffee / sloshing into your gloves” (11-12), and “baled wheat scattered / everywhere like missing coffins” (11-12).

Junkyard Quotes, Week 2

"Don't play with my Jesus." -Supernatural
"Dude, your butt hair looks weird." -Sister to our dog, Brant
"Staying young is a brutal business." -Plastic surgeon on Supernatural.
"I don't like toe tags, cause I wanna wear socks when I die." -Matt
"Hungry for long pig (human flesh)." -Supernatural

I selected these quotes for their humor, unusual content, or in the case of long pig, their extension of my vocabulary.

Improv 2 Week 1

A portion of “Current” by Khadijah Queen

Of course, fingerprints do not
Evaporate if a woman somewhere

Soars horizontally out to sea.
But how not to

Seize the oscillation, dive under,
Fearless, no longer blind
To parallels.

---

Of course, fingerprints evaporate
from a prepubescent child. Wisps of water,
not oil coat fingertip cracks and
if not careful, traces of a
stolen child disappear
in an hour. The mother’s screams only
heat air faster, urging the marks to
vanish like the name of the girl
in the Volvo cab. Vanish as easily as
hair threads from scalp for him to
finger eternally as even she
drowns in her own water. An hour
couldn’t mist the lake fast enough and she
only had four minutes to graze the bottom.

Response Week 1

Gabrielle Calvocoressi’s recent poetry collection, entitled The Last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart, presents thirteen post-Modern, or anti-Romantic, poems. These pieces reject a sense of an untamable, untainted maternal Nature as a source of human purification and revitalization, and support the post-Modern conception of a tarnished and human-conquered Nature. Calvocoressi’s collection centers on decaying towns, failed and ever-present technology, and the subsequent struggle and oppression of the people. She presents her rendition of human-inflicted disasters from varying and multiple perspectives in several of the poems, including “From the Adult Drive-In.” This piece however, in contrast to the many other multiple-perspective pieces in the collection, depicts a decaying town as many of the citizens view an overarching adult film on the hillside from the perspective of various townspeople and the film characters. This poem is the sole multiple-perspective piece that details a seemingly current, unknown event with anonymous characters. Furthermore, the piece follows a different format than its counterparts: rather than the nine sub-sections succinctly following one another, they scatter throughout the collection. The language and format allow readers to both view and participate in the poem, which becomes increasing violent. However, the altering structure allows the readers to experience horror and disgust, yet swiftly abandon concern at the next poem. Calvocoressi, however, recursively slams the material into readers’ faces and forces them to remember current horrors as equally as the past events she details.

Freewrite 2 Week 1

A spider scuttled across
the carpet, its legs whisking
fibers into spools. My
boyfriend eased to squish it,
but I shrieked and it
flailed, eight eyes
glaring at his sole.
A testament to spirituality,
it laces tales of theology, and
yet defies santion and God.
The shoe plunges into the
softened back and hundreds of
avengers spill from the carcus
like croissants. Tiny plagues to
devour mother and destroyer alike.

Freewrite 1 Week 1

I gazed at a board
in single-variable calc,
or drawing, analyzing
the chalk circle
caved slightly on the left.
I though of circles,
geometry tools and Paint.
Never making a cicle.
Unable. A fantastic
image. The circle only
exists in the decayed
minds of European mathematicians--
ventriloquists to modern
dummies. A Flatland figment, earth
is no sphere and never was.
Count its flesh pocks of
man and think of theories.
Of perfection and God.

Improv 1 Week 1

Selection of Sylvia Plath’s “The Arrival of the Bee Box”
I put my eye to the grid.
It is dark, dark,
With the swarmy feeling of African hands
Minute and shrunk for export,
Black on black, angrily clambering.

--

I gaze at the lacquered box,
And feel the heat of African hands
Shaping wood and splinters to this
Coaster holder, our makeshift urn.
The black swirls peel from grains as
I argue with my mother.
You can’t keep a dead man in the
kitchen. Her brother, Johnny.
Overdosed on heroin and
Apathy, his death too shameful for
A service. For a burial. His life too
Gutter to spread ashes. Where—
Little Five? Cabbage Town? The I-20 bridge?
He squats in our house, his ashes hoarded in
My nose and the vacuum cleaner.
I hear the heart beat of an addict
And feel like pressurized wood
As a ghost watches me not sleep.
The most time he’s spent with me in
Years, though he once crocheted a
Bear for me in jail and sent me
Birthday cards with my misspelled name.
I can feel the Africans, their drums and
Johnny’s heartbeat roaring to
The tune of denial.

Week 1 Junkyard Quotes

People say I have a Cabbage Patch crack, because it's so innocent. -Eric
This reference initiated from a friend concerning his ass crevice. I found the language interesting to insert an outdating cultural reference well-known to many (if not all age-relevant) Americans into a commercial idealism and a sexual context.

Do lies lie in the truth? -Classmate CNF
A slight tongue-twister, this sparked in Hipchen's Creative Non-Fiction class, where we as a class were discussing truthiness and the deceptions of truth. The interesting portion of this quote includes the duality of the second "lie"--meaning either a fragmentation of the "Truth" or a physical (or metaphorically geographical) position.

Ai/I use(s) fuck really well. -Heather
As you may remember, this surfaced in our own classroom upon discussing the uses of profanity in poetry. This quote can either serve as homage to Ai, or as an interesting first-person perspective. I think this could actually form into an ars poetica piece, were one interested.

For such a lovely crime, I'll do the time. Better lock me up, I'll do it again. -Dave Matthews Band "I Did It"
I selected this piece because I regularly listen to the DMB, and was trying to figure out why I have every song memorized. I decided the beats in combination with the words and politics continues to draw me in. I enjoy this line for its social and polical commentary on the judicial and reform system, rebelliousness as heroism, and a sort of sinful pleasure and voyeurism.

Dude--we've got two hobos and an engaged lesbian in here. - Holly
I've found recently that some of my best work initiates from the political incorrectness of my friends--as seen in this statement by Holly. These issues of homosexuality, marriage, welfare, and an insecure economy surface even in the slightest of jokes, and I believe that the same politics will often surface in my works.

Walker

My grandmother, ninety, obsessed with dying,
needs help in the bathroom. Collapsing onto the wide
plastic booster chair, she slumps against
the toilet paper holder. My mother and I support
her as she wipes, and count the steps to
her walker. On the way, she straightens the hand towels.
She shuffles through
the rest of the family--six years with Aunt Kathy,
a two month stint with Joan, and a
Florida cameo with Barbara. She arrived
at our house three days ago, one day before
my dog chewed her oxygen line. Don't worry;
she's fine. Though she won't meet
anyone if her hair falls flat, applies lipstick
for the postman, whose eyes, she tells me,
seem too close together. Forty-five minutes
and four wooden steps pushing the walker
to the mailbox. Three miscarriages, seven children,
a couple strokes: a couple times a day,
she asks to die, tells us with an airy chuckle
she may not be here to see my father's tomato plants.
Huddled in a thermal blanket, she reads
her pill labels. Because soda makes her vomit,
we told her the factory shut down. Each day she
watches the news and waits for their strike to end.
At dinner time, she sits of the couch and watches us speak.
Or we play her box set of Walker, Texas Ranger,
and I think the excruciating beauty
of those Austin sunsets helps her forget,
briefly. With her red wine and pot roast, forget
the things her husband said that hurt her
after she found condoms in his pocket.
Or her alcoholic daughter,
who married three like her father.
I'm asked constatnly how old I am,
because dementia means her husband is still alive,
or that I'm her daughter,
or that she and her sister still shuffle
through the Depression in their ankle-length skirts.

Tile Draft 4

The art of losing is hard to master
and sounds like creaking knees
as I bend to tile a floor.
Drips of water saws drown the whir of blades
ripping squares of kitchen tiles.
Swipes of dulled blades to mortar
and plastic pegs to separate my work form yours.
I ease my way out of the back corner,
filled with broken webs,
one edged tile at a time, and
remind myself of the games we'd
invented. Dinosaurs and astronauts soon
paled to the magic of angolo and
counter rails, majolica and formella. Yet no
running bond could keep us together--
you, with your no-childhood face
glaring at me as we swipe yet again.
A lifetime apprecticeship for you, my son,
the only token I had. Not enough for your
mother, not for you, and your eyes
smoke of her. Your hair shrouds the gray of
that eye, and I wish again I'd had a girl.
A girl to sweep and butter after
your mother left to open a
no-star restaurant with linoleum floors
and empty walls where our picture should
fall. A girl to remind me of her, to
fashion and crackle better than you
ever would. My son, with your feminine
hands, keep your chin to mortar and
mastic, and smile a tune to me.

Pork Chop Thursday Draft 4

The trill of a 5:45 wake up,
Sring shoes for four children under eight,
A missing button, and egg-carton traffic.
You no longer feel the hand down your pants
And radios wrinkle waves over news.
Printers jam and a pre-school nurse
rings of coughts, flus, and the sandbox.
Grocer's hands brush your breast
Because your check was $30 short, and his
Breath squinges in your ear like sliced beef.
Long division and alphabet songs
Wince as a tea kettle whispers
And plates pound the sink.
Prozac can't twinge your breats enough
Because your husband is fucking a 15 year old
And sometimes, cries her name instead.
Swirls of sweet tea, tap water and Budweiser;
Baked pork chops, stringed beans, corn and sulfur rolls;
Clicks of school days and accounting as corner dogs puddle.
Pirate ships ripple the bathroom walls,
And jammies slice sheets and switches after
Stories of bedtime mice and closets.
You creep to bed, your toes catching the hinge
Before pillows fall flat and you weave yourself
further away from him and his dreams.
Winking lights from the street seem
To glow outside your beige bedroom window,
But you only hear their silent plead.

Kayla Draft 4

My sister Kayla has a trail of faded pigmentation from her navel to sternum, accentuating her bleached happy trail. This line resists all tanning and burns. It splits her like a paper doll, and mimics my brother's appendectomy scar. My mother weaved her creation story from this marking.
God made you the most wonderful little boy of all. He asked his special Stork to carry you straight to my arms. The Stork immediately set out with you wrapped and folded in beak and wings. But, all of a sudden, a terrible storm blew up, with lightning and gales. You, my precious, were struck with a single fearsome bolt of lightning that hit your chest and ran down your body until it zapped your penis off. From that day, you were cursed a girl, but this line shows you're more special to me than all the others.
The story masked the horror of childbirth my sister could have suffered--trailing the shaved genitalia of a streched mother of three. Kayla, however, dodged the skull-squishing slide and broke from a c-section. To this day, Kayla avoids a solid crotch, preferring to not dream of butterscotch and sex. Asexual. A word I avoided until college, never explaining to our mother that her story would leave Kayla lonely forever, dreaming of test tubes and storks, avoiding the scent of men and women alike.
Kayla always maintained the most fluidity of any in the family. Each year, she was able to reinvent herself--a changed name, job, friends, schools, music and family role. Kayla, Brooke, KK, Kayla-bean, Beaner, Stick-legs, K, Horse-legs, and Scales managed to transition into the softball-soccer-football-volleyball-basketball player, the veterinarian, the cleaner, the Dixie rebel, the Christian, and the criminal. She changed university campuses and classes as easily as the air fresheners in her Civic. All she required was a new story--a tale of broken hearts and friends that never existed, lovers of which she never read, and the dreams of unknown masterbations.
To us, she was always the last child, the surprise. The spark to my mother's spaying and a house with another bedroom. I watched her change her story each year and always wondered which life, if any, contented her. If she was happy, or if her most famed moment was falling from the lightning.

Greenhouse Draft 4

I push back sunglasses and
fasten leather gloves to
graze and weed flower trays.
My fingers pluck dead
blooms and beetles. My
shoes crunch gravel and
sweat pools over my
eyes and between breasts.
I twine my headscarf again as
wisps of burlap dance in the wind.
Mendelssohn fills the air, his
second movement buzzing
in time to the drips of hoses.
Dirt and fertilizer sprinkle
my neck and cheek, and I
sneeze as I smear my forehead.
Shears peak from my apron, caked
shut in dirt and grease of too many years.
The whirs of greenhouse fans
creak with violins and the toads.
I work with Maria, who runs from the toads,
the ones like poisonous Mexico.
Maria's feet spark the earth and
it rises to fluff my nose. The air smells of
pansies, earth, and mold. The dome
reaches for the heavens and the sun
strikes through the plastic folds.
A sparrow chirps outside, and seems
as loud as the pulse in my ears, throbbing legato.
Above, seven sprinkler heads jerk and
blades of water wink the flowers asleep,
sprinkling rust in my eye.
I hear Maria's whimpers and wonder
if the geraniums of Mexico are brighter.
I weave a rubbered stem into the tail of the scarf
and hum to mask the scent of Maria's salt scorching her lips.

Fallen Draft 4

How I prefer the authors who
fail to pen a character with a
voice. Hundreds of pages
loop around this person,
creature--a world encircling
those too strong for words. The
Dantes and Picoults sprinkle the
covers I devour. Curled
around a half-written
novel and blaze, my voice and
mind as useless and
thin as paper. A character peeks
between chapters that detail
others--other forms, faces, and
lives, until the pages shroud
it like a star. Do I love these tales
because they fail me? Fancying
novels and poems without leaders,
I dance the void of hells and cancers--
masochism at its most pleasurable.
Inclined to graze eternity without
speech or action, I could find
happiness and you.