Drawing Cards

When I was in high school in California, I taught myself how to read tarot cards. It was my first step into my own independent, spiritual practices, and it opened up doors for me.

I don't read cards as much any more, mostly because I feel like I've answered my questions for now, but I still remember what it felt like to learn how to read them. So, when read. write. poem. had a prompt to interpret dream symbolism through tarot (among other methods), I was immediately transported back to that time.

Here is the daily quatrain that resulted:

Three of Swords

Everything was too big for me: width and
length of the deck in my hands, the questions
I tried to answer. Three steel swords piercing
my fragile pink heart. Too big, the burdens.


Note: If you click on the title, you can read an interpretation of the card. The picture is of the different "Three of Swords" cards from my personal decks.

Back into Practice

These past couple of weeks, I've been doing many things, but writing isn't one of them. I've been keeping up with my articles, for the most part, but I have stopped my daily writing on the bus and I haven't been able to regularly keep up with prompts from read. write. poem.

So, I've decided to change my daily writing practice a bit. I haven't enjoyed the morning pages, so I've decided to write one syllabic quatrain a day. I began writing syllabic quatrains in graduate school while writing my thesis, because I figured, if I could get out at least 40 syllables, that was good enough. Several times, I've written quatrains around a theme and then brought them together in one poem. Right now, though, I'm not thinking that far ahead. I'm merely trying to get my hand moving.

So, I began writing quatrains on Thursday, and I now have three. Funny enough, they all center around the last RWP prompt of sacrifice, so I'm submitting them belatedly for RWP. (I haven't even started on my ode, which is due on Monday.) I may not publish my daily quatrains every day, but I will try to post the ones that I've found interesting.

On Sacrifice

When wanting, I'm left with the metal
tang of blood on my tongue, remnants of skin
clipped from cuticle, chewed from the soft
flesh of my cheek. I never wanted more.

(Tuesday, February 12)
* * *

I've lived with less, intentionally, less
creased books and wrinkled receipts, less shopping
malls crammed with clothes. I laid myself prostrate
on acrylic counters, begged for my price.

(Wednesday, February 13)
* * *

Today, I woke from weeping dreams, hiccups
and sighs I've hoarded for years. I only
recall bright glimpses of someone else's
treasures, glittering hopes I've long since lost.

(Thursday, February 14)

Backlog

I've been busy, as you probably know. But that's no excuse for the backlog of posts that I planned on posting these past weeks. So, here is a lame attempt to catch up.

I have several articles I've published recently that I haven't shared with you, including an interview with Kirsten Dierking, author of Northern Oracle (pg of the PDF); a review of Kevin Kling's The Dog Says How (also pg 4); and a review of Matthea Harvey's Modern Life.

Whew! I feel better, now that I've caught up.

I will write an actual post sometime this weekend. It may contain something about poetry.

Oh My God, I Actually Wrote a Poem

It's barely on prompt from read. write. poem., but I'm just proud I actually wrote a real poem. Whew.

Snowbanks

Salt water melts
at a lower temperature and yet
here I am, clothed
in a carapace of ice. It started
slowly, as it always does. My eyes
shedding narrow rivulets against
the wind. Icicles grew on the tips
of my eyelashes, hung in sharp relief
against the night sky. Once they stretched
over the cool hollow of my sockets, touched
my exposed skin, it was too late.
My vision was soon obscured by layers
of gray white ice. I huddled
deep inside of myself, loosening my skin
against the husk that eveleoped me.
Waiting here, shivering but not shattering,
I conserve my heat and pray
to break against the frozen street.

Reading List 2008: Terror & Robots

Okay, so I finished January's Poetry Book Club book several days ago, but I just realized I have to put it up. My short review: Matthea Harvey Rocks.

You can read a much less abbreviated response to Matthea Harvey's Modern Life (80 pages) in two ways. On January 31, we'll have our Poetry Book Club discussion. And, on the first Tuesday of January, I'll post a more formal review of the book on Read. Write. Poem.

Total For 2008: 1159 pages
Genres: Memoir (1), Essay (1), Graphic Novel (1), Non-Fiction (1), Poetry (1)

Imitation is the Sincerest Form of Ripping Someone Off

This poem's form was inspired by Matthea Harvey's The Future of Terror series, which I wrote about yesterday. But more importantly, it was inspired by the trigger over at read. write. poem. You should run over there to check out other wonderful poems, written about "Traveling Companions."

On the Bus

Babbling babies drool in mommas' laps
buried beneath
layers of blue fleece blankets.
Sour, end of day bad breath

crowds the aisles, shared
carbon dioxide clinging
to our closed mouths. Cacophony
of overloud cell phone conversations,

diluted digital music streams
murmuring from dislodged iPod
ear buds. Dank lighting
drained of all color, but yellow. Don't

evade eye contact, don't
erupt into edgy rage. Never cross
the equator of your seat
even on days your coat's too long,

or your bag's too full. Forget
the time time table, finish line
of your final destination.
The faint whisper of Fuck, fuck, fuck,

from the gelatinous grandma up front,
her grating whine. Gracefully
embrace the gorge of the aisle
as the godforsaken bus shudders

to a halt. Here is your escape:
hop over the gray snow bank,
hear the hum of diesel engines,
hurtling down the street.

Poetry With a Partner

Jack, from Monkeyboy, and I wrote this poem via Gmail before the holidays for RWP. Definitely an interesting experience, and I think I'm quite fond of the result. Enjoy!


I once loved to disbud flowers, press beheaded blossoms between two cruel fingers.
Petals fell by the wayside as I shaped the plant to my taste.
I was left with only my hands full of stems, a flash of fragrance in my throat.
Rose water running down my face and feet taken root when I wasn’t looking,
and the insistent tug of roots seeking sustenance. Thorns dotted my thighs,
leaves uncurled gently among my hair, the sun beckoned me
out from the shade. I curled my arms, tender petals, towards warmth
and trusted my own buds to the light and the wind
I longed for shelter, even as I bent my tendrils towards the sky.

Bending and Breaking Lines

This week’s prompt from Read Write Poem is an excellent one. They are prompting us to examine our line breaks and perhaps revise a poem, with attention to the line breaks. They encourage us to either use an imposed form (if that’s not our bag) or alternatively, use free verse if that’s more our style. I love thinking about line breaks and their effect on the sound of the poem, as well as the meaning of the line and the overall poem. Nerdiness ensued this week.

I decided to use this prompt as an opportunity to revise a poem that I felt wasn’t working. So I went through my major overhaul folder and dug up Bedtime Stories, which I wrote as a prose poem for Poetry Thursday. I decided to impose a line length (ten syllables) and a stanza length, so that I could focus my attention on the language and the image. I also tried to integrate my writing group’s critique. I feel it was a good exercise and it felt intuitive, in its own way.

Bedtime Stories

Once upon a time, there was a young girl
who scrubbed stubborn gray ash from her stone bed
and spun silence into silk and cloaked her

heart inside. She only escaped at night.
She frequented all the right places, pearl
white palaces and crowded balls, parties

where no one noticed her homemade dress, where
nobody knew her real name. Once upon
a time, there was a young boy, trapped in hell,

if hell was a party where people snacked
on fish eggs while whispering idle lies.
He saw the girl from across the room, watched

her anonymous smiles. He was deep in
love. We know what happened next. He followed
her home. After dark. Watched her change back to

gray rags, wax the kitchen floor. He was hooked.
Once upon a time, he made a promise,
gave her a pair of glass shoes, delicate

and transparent as dreams. He said, “Baby,
wear these and walk all the way home with me.”
While he wasn’t watching, she put them on.

Here’s what we don’t know. The shoes were so tight
they sliced the skin clean off her heels, layers
of white flesh peeled away. It hurt like hell.

She was afraid of the blood, but she wore
them anyway, hobbled home. She wore them
every day. Every day she watched her skin

whittle down, like an unfolding onion.
She waited for them to fit perfectly,
her second skin. She waited a long time.

What I Was Thinking at 6:00 on Thanksgiving Day, Making Stuffing

Sweet, Vidalia and Pearl

Cutting in to you, I know
I've tried too much to be like you:
transparent layers ever surrounding
a center with nothing
but a small knot. I never knew
when to stop peeling, when your paper
skin yields to yellow flesh, when
you become edible. Instead, I peel
away too much of you, waste
what could be saved
and dice the rest
into irregularly shaped squares.
My hands smell like fear
and exertion, a stink I will carry with me.
An all day reminder
of our defense mechanisms.

How Are Sentences American?

Here's my first post for read. write. poem. They encouraged us to write American Sentences, a form pioneered by Allen Ginsberg. The form is similar to the haiku, because it has 17 syllables, but it doesn't use line breaks and you don't have to reference the season. Here are my attempts at the form, which I intended to arrange into a poem, but I ran out of time.


I love counting syllables, because everything can be segmented.

****

Slept in, missed sunrise today, and found myself staring at blue-gray skies.

****

I don't want to think of all that I swallowed, moving through my body.

****

Unfocusing and focusing my eyes, I make the world a green blur.

****

My body wrenches, remembers terrors my careful mind long swallowed.

****

Bus windows make us flimsy phantom reflections the night passes through.

****

Everything should be as easy to erase as cheap pink nail polish.

****

Stale pipe smoke blows me back to grandpa's closed bedroom door, soot on my hands.

****

In sleep, I dream better homes, with more secret rooms, than I have when awake.