In which, uh, there are poems.
I FAIL AT FINISHING FICS THIS WEEK. But I promise you guys something will be up soon :D
In the meantime, I am taking the "post a poem" business to mean "post a poetry spam!" Three brilliant pieces and a couple of my attempts under the cut--that last largely because I feel guilty for posting next to nothing of my own this week.
Sentimental Moment or Why Did the Baguette Cross the Road?
Don't fill up on bread
I say absent-mindedly
The servings here are huge
My son, whose hair may be
receding a bit, says
Did you really just
say that to me?
What he doesn't know
is that when we're walking
together, when we get
to the curb
I sometimes start to reach
for his hand
-Robert Hershon
I don't know. It's such a sharp, sweet piece, capturing so briefly and yet SO WELL that sort of... never-ending condition of parent/child relationships. I always want to cry a little, reading it.
Emptying Town
I want to erase your footprints
from my walls. Each pillow
is thick with your reasons. Omens
fill the sidewalk below my window: a woman
in a party hat, clinging
to a tin-foil balloon. Shadows
creep slowly across the tar, someone yells, "Stop!"
and I close my eyes. I can't watch
as this town slowly empties, leaving me
strung between bon-voyages, like so many clothes
on a line, the white handkerchief
stuck in my throat. You know the way Jesus
rips open his shirt
to show us his heart, all flaming and thorny,
the way he points to it. I'm afraid
the way I'll miss you will be this obvious.
I have a friend who everyone warns me
is dangerous, he hides
bloody images of Jesus
around my house, for me to find
when I come home; Jesus
behind the cupboard door, Jesus tucked
into the mirror. He wants to save me
but we disagree from what. My version of hell
is someone ripping open his shirt
and saying, Look what I did for you. . .
-Nick Flynn
For me, this is all about the language and the imagery and the... power? I suppose? Behind the words. I was raised Jewish and so I'm sure I'm probably missing an aspect of it, but I just don't care. Also, I'm more than a little in love with Nick Flynn. Seriously, go pick up his memoir, Another Bullshit Night in Suck City. His phrasing and casually tortured way of looking at everything is just beyond belief.
Birds
It is hunger and territory
although we choose to call it song.
THIS POEM. I saw it in a copy of a literary magazine called The Laurel Review a few years ago; I remember the poem exactly but I'm a little unsure of the author. I want to say the guy's name was Albert Goldsmith, but I've lost my copy of the mag and I can't be SURE. Google has failed me, and I feel betrayed. Nonetheless, it's a gorgeous, thought-provoking little piece, isn't it?
And these last are mine, and there is a reason I tend to stick to fiction, and the lack of capitalization is largely because I am lazy, and I have been waffling about posting them for fifteen minutes, because, gah, poetry. I am sure I will lock and unlock this post MORE THAN ONCE in the next few hours. Nonetheless:
footing and how to lose it
somewhere between the tangle of sheets and
the awkward first and second kisses and
the slick flavor of routine, I forgot
what it meant to be sexless and feckless, caught
hungrily on words that might not mean anything at all.
but here I am, in this old new world where the language
is one of verbiage and not of sweat and grime,
where I don't always know where
my feet are going to fall, where I am
suddenly achingly aware of my own imperfect body
and the places it once deigned to go.
maybe we'll sit on the terrace next tuesday
and you'll talk slow like you mean it or maybe
i won't call you, will wash my hair instead of
letting your guitar calloused fingers graze
the mosquito bite on my neck.
but i don't dare break the silence here by touching you,
again and again, in the darkness.
but i do always shut down the age guy at the carnival
higher education taught me that every woman has
dreamt of what her body would look like, if she
was in charge: in my fantasies, I am just the same
but three inches taller; but with sharp angles,
stress lines, built into my face
the reality is: that i am always
always
always
carded for cigarettes and no one ever
tells me that i look my age and perky waitresses
hand me children's menus half the time
i want to press up against them with my double d's
(hard-earned, too, those breasts, years
of bleeding fruitlessly, waiting for them to grow)
i want tell them where they can stick it, i want
to speak until they hear me and know i'm
too smart to be a child
and so i try to explain and they all think
i'm crazy, they tell me to wait until i'm older
(like they told me when i was ten and the word
fuck held a deep mahogany mystery for me and
when i was seventeen and learned what it meant
and when i was fifteen and scared and strange and
didn't look right to myself)
i thought this was older i thought i wouldn't
have to wait anymore i thought
i thought growing up was all at once
In the meantime, I am taking the "post a poem" business to mean "post a poetry spam!" Three brilliant pieces and a couple of my attempts under the cut--that last largely because I feel guilty for posting next to nothing of my own this week.
Sentimental Moment or Why Did the Baguette Cross the Road?
Don't fill up on bread
I say absent-mindedly
The servings here are huge
My son, whose hair may be
receding a bit, says
Did you really just
say that to me?
What he doesn't know
is that when we're walking
together, when we get
to the curb
I sometimes start to reach
for his hand
-Robert Hershon
I don't know. It's such a sharp, sweet piece, capturing so briefly and yet SO WELL that sort of... never-ending condition of parent/child relationships. I always want to cry a little, reading it.
Emptying Town
I want to erase your footprints
from my walls. Each pillow
is thick with your reasons. Omens
fill the sidewalk below my window: a woman
in a party hat, clinging
to a tin-foil balloon. Shadows
creep slowly across the tar, someone yells, "Stop!"
and I close my eyes. I can't watch
as this town slowly empties, leaving me
strung between bon-voyages, like so many clothes
on a line, the white handkerchief
stuck in my throat. You know the way Jesus
rips open his shirt
to show us his heart, all flaming and thorny,
the way he points to it. I'm afraid
the way I'll miss you will be this obvious.
I have a friend who everyone warns me
is dangerous, he hides
bloody images of Jesus
around my house, for me to find
when I come home; Jesus
behind the cupboard door, Jesus tucked
into the mirror. He wants to save me
but we disagree from what. My version of hell
is someone ripping open his shirt
and saying, Look what I did for you. . .
-Nick Flynn
For me, this is all about the language and the imagery and the... power? I suppose? Behind the words. I was raised Jewish and so I'm sure I'm probably missing an aspect of it, but I just don't care. Also, I'm more than a little in love with Nick Flynn. Seriously, go pick up his memoir, Another Bullshit Night in Suck City. His phrasing and casually tortured way of looking at everything is just beyond belief.
Birds
It is hunger and territory
although we choose to call it song.
THIS POEM. I saw it in a copy of a literary magazine called The Laurel Review a few years ago; I remember the poem exactly but I'm a little unsure of the author. I want to say the guy's name was Albert Goldsmith, but I've lost my copy of the mag and I can't be SURE. Google has failed me, and I feel betrayed. Nonetheless, it's a gorgeous, thought-provoking little piece, isn't it?
And these last are mine, and there is a reason I tend to stick to fiction, and the lack of capitalization is largely because I am lazy, and I have been waffling about posting them for fifteen minutes, because, gah, poetry. I am sure I will lock and unlock this post MORE THAN ONCE in the next few hours. Nonetheless:
footing and how to lose it
somewhere between the tangle of sheets and
the awkward first and second kisses and
the slick flavor of routine, I forgot
what it meant to be sexless and feckless, caught
hungrily on words that might not mean anything at all.
but here I am, in this old new world where the language
is one of verbiage and not of sweat and grime,
where I don't always know where
my feet are going to fall, where I am
suddenly achingly aware of my own imperfect body
and the places it once deigned to go.
maybe we'll sit on the terrace next tuesday
and you'll talk slow like you mean it or maybe
i won't call you, will wash my hair instead of
letting your guitar calloused fingers graze
the mosquito bite on my neck.
but i don't dare break the silence here by touching you,
again and again, in the darkness.
but i do always shut down the age guy at the carnival
higher education taught me that every woman has
dreamt of what her body would look like, if she
was in charge: in my fantasies, I am just the same
but three inches taller; but with sharp angles,
stress lines, built into my face
the reality is: that i am always
always
always
carded for cigarettes and no one ever
tells me that i look my age and perky waitresses
hand me children's menus half the time
i want to press up against them with my double d's
(hard-earned, too, those breasts, years
of bleeding fruitlessly, waiting for them to grow)
i want tell them where they can stick it, i want
to speak until they hear me and know i'm
too smart to be a child
and so i try to explain and they all think
i'm crazy, they tell me to wait until i'm older
(like they told me when i was ten and the word
fuck held a deep mahogany mystery for me and
when i was seventeen and learned what it meant
and when i was fifteen and scared and strange and
didn't look right to myself)
i thought this was older i thought i wouldn't
have to wait anymore i thought
i thought growing up was all at once