random thoughts poem

sundays were for shaving, and
i keep forgetting the kiwi in the fridge
there are bottle caps in my elephants head
my phone booth is a pencil sharpener, really
i should have bought that track jacket, cut off the hood
i didn't hang up the posters, i flooded the bamboo
i stepped on my tee shirt 3 weeks ago and there is
still a footprint
my bed is foam now
and so much taller
and the waterbottle
is so far away

short story! (or mid term for Hannah's Prose class)

We had to answer three questions, and one was an open ended creative writing prompt that's only requiremnt was it be a list:

You always had orange palms. You’d rub that fake spray tan from the bottle all over your body and it’d stay on your palms looking like the colors of orange Crayola canyons that names where unpronounceable or forgettable. You had the biggest the hands of a girl I’ve ever seen, but somehow when you held a pen it didn’t look smaller than it should have, and you held it like you engraving into stone. Your hands always look orange, but with a layer of burnt dust over them. You played short shop like me and when you gripped the neon 12 inch softballs I could hardly see the ball. I always wondered if when your hands got sweaty, if the fake tan would ware off, and if it did, and you wiped your brow, would it look like you were putting on war paint.

You always squeezed my hands until they were egg white and my fingernails turned cherry. You cracked my knuckles until there was no air left in them. You would finger my cuticle, farther and farther back until my nails looked like great white shark teeth. Sometimes you would put my fingers in your mouth and you would run your tongue along my fingers as if you were playing a piano. You suck on my middle finger, where I had the scar, from when I went rocking climbing and Tommy Quintas slipped above me and a small boulder came hurtling down at me. I covered my face and it just took of a tip of my finger, and I could feel it every time I threw. You’d always suck on that middle finger, right on the scar, outlining it.

You’d walk past me in the halls and swing your right arm like a fast pitch softball pitcher and smack my ass and then grip it like you gripped a softball. You never ran your hands through my hairs, like you did with Max’s. You used your fingers as a spoon when you ate pudding. I didn’t find it sexy. You played whack a mole on my crotch with your big tow trucker hands in Physics class. You held a permanent marker like you were engraving in stone and rolled up your right pant leg to etch my phone number on your bare, smooth leg. Your hands were always lukewarm. After softball practice, jogging around the gym, you’d hold your hands on your stomach, because your shirt was always short and showing your belly button, and after when we waited for the bus your hands were still lukewarm. Even on my birthday, on the coldest day in February, when we had forgotten our mittens and stood at the bus stop for an hour and a half holding hands.

Your fingers always had big tacky rings on them, from your boyfriend, but you took the off when you put on that fake spray tan. I told you it would look cool if you left the rings on when you put on the fake spray tan, so when you took them off you would have white rings on your finger. But you said that would ruin the rings your boyfriend gave to you, and I said so, and then you didn’t hold my hands for the rest of the day. On graduation you put your hands in my pockets, kissed my cheek and walked away.  

I think this question was something like what ideas of yours have changed since being in this class or which haven't. Something to that affect, I think, because I had do something right since I got an A on it all. Here it is:

 One thing that Professor Anton said about “Bullet in the Brain” was that the last lines were like music and that if young authors should ever get musical idea like that in their heads, that they should run with it.  I had never thought about combining music and writing like that. I had always thought about the two separately and it wasn’t till I had heard that, did I really start to really listen to song lyrics. I think two great examples are John Wayne Gacy Jr. by Sufjan Stevens and Westfall by Okkervil River. Both songs are about murder, and just by the quality of the lyrics, I feel troubled, because I sympathize for Gacy and the killer in Westfall. In Westfall, Sheff sings”evil don’t look like anything. ” Every time I listen to that song, I am haunted by those lyrics, they mesmerize me. And the Gacy song, leaves me almost feeling sympathetic to him, and even was murdering kids not far from where my parents grew up. I think I got a little off topic, but I wanted to say is that music, lyrics, and prose are not separate, and that musical aspect of prose is troubling and magical. I think the best stories have great prose that could read like poetry or song lyrics. And the best songs should be able to stand on there own as poems or stories, i.e. American Pie or A Postcard to Nina.

            

I really like that quote you put on the essay assignment sheet, the “to notice the the way my mother, say, often wipes her lips just before kissing me..” I think that the details that we notice are the details that stay with us, like scenes and actions from films, like the tapping the nose from The Sting. Or any detail from or scene from a movie or tv show that leaves us thinking about it long after we have watched it. Those scenes leave us wondering what we would do if we had been in those character’s shoes. And I think every piece we have read for this class has that effect in some degree.   

           
I think the final thing idea that has changed in my mind is when writing, maybe one doesn’t always have to show. I can’t remember who the quote was from, but it was in How Fiction works and it was when the woman had the blood disease and needed constant transfusions, and the blood had to be so many degrees colder. And when she tried to explain it to people in a more metaphorically or poetic way, she really couldn’t, but it really was because there was no reason to. I thought this so insightful because sometimes feel I have to describe something that maybe doesn’t have to be described and now I don’t have to wrack my brain trying to think of something wholly original. I think all these things, and everything I have read will make me a better reader, and will help me as a writerer as well.


The last question was what should good stories do, or something like that:

I believe that good stories should leave the reader worried or troubled. I think almost every story we have read have left me feeling something, and I tend to think that the best stories leave the reader conflicted. The example that is freshest in my mind is “Girl” which I wrote my essay on. I felt that by the end of the story I was sympathizing with the mother-figure, more than the girl, who all the commands were being pelted at. Of course I felt worried for the girl as well, as she was called slut three times and was told how to perform an abortion and how be abused by a man. Another example would be The Things They Carried and how the reader doesn’t know if they should blame Lt. Cross for Ted Lavender’s death or just sympathize with him. That whole book should leave readers troubled, with question of what it acceptable in war (killing a puppy, burning villages, cutting a guy’s thumb off and carrying it around).  “Where Are You Going? Where Have You Been?” should leave a reader feeling worried for the girl, and even before one realizes the guy is the devil. Both Flannery O’Connor stories left me troubled, over race issues and both endings. Even the poem “the Colonel” should leave the reader worried, for the reporter/ poet and the people of the country she is visiting. I guess for a reader to feel worried or troubled, they have to connect with the characters and for each character I did. I think it all can be traced back to Nabokov’s article that said the writer should tell a story, teach a lesson and enchant. The best stories, including the ones I listed, do all three. I think the most important aspect is the enchanter, the magician. To leave the reader mesmerized is what all writers should strive for. A great example of this was the last lines in Bullet in the Brain, “they is, they is.” There is something musical about that last lines, but at the same time enchanting. I think to sum it up: the enchanting magical quality of writing transcends basic human emotions. Someone said that poetry is the secret between two strangers. Well, good writers as enchanters create secrets between their readers, that settle deep into their bones.

 (Really, deep into their bones? Bullshit scale just broke. That’s what comes out when the deadline neared.)  

parts and pieces of poems (or my mid term for my poetry class)

This is the way the river once flowed

This is the vigil by the river.

This is the unfinished tunnel entrance.

This is the newspaper clippings of the flood.

This is where the boy’s father dove in.

This is a box of waterlogged incomes tax receipts from 1972.

This is picture of a baseball field completely underwater. 

This is where they found the boy’s body.  

Rain hits snow mounds to

create corral, to scoop in your

hand that you can’t even feel

beneath cloth or cotton that is

falling from the sky. 

Elephant ears floating as lily pads

tusks rising as fins, the safari,

the ocean one. 

The mile long train’s broken English call

The mannequin hangs with its fingers cut off

sweet clementine eyes

The trees had the blood sucked out of them

but the whoosh

                        of a saw being bent

is the  sound of summer

                        and the song lacks la la’s 

poems! many!

The 21^st weekend

I became the train, after sitting in the damp lobby.

The woman sitting next me, behind her trashy magazine,

sighed with her eyes when I wasn’t asked for identification.

Later, Dave Davison or Rivers Coming or a Phillip K. Dick

character brought us slabs of meat and me a Left Hand Fade to Black

that’s rings around the glass became descending tree trunks.

The top of my skull was scalped, when I put my lips

to the billowing bottle, and a roll of duct tape became

the most interesting I had ever seen, as Greg Gillis smashed

the only living boy in New York into Lil’ Jon.

When I swallowed the earth, with its red wax seal

I let it pillage my throat, and felt the blood rush to my toes.

    And when I returned, the flag poles tap danced. 

A Baker’s Dozen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

I’ve actually never seen one.

They’re not the same as crows, right?

It seems strange that a cardinal is a cardinal,

and not a red bird.

Magicians use doves, but sometimes are considered

masters of the dark magic.

Seems like a mistake on the ambiance,

on their part, throwing in some white. 

A sparrow once flew into my sliding door

And I used a dust pan to take it outside.

My professor told me there are exotic birds on the South side

but I’m not sure if I believe her.

Sometimes I see misery sleeping on windowsills.

A pack of pigeons is a misery, or it should be.

I’ve seen pigeons eating their own shit,

and some have orange eyes.

 They’re don’t seem to notice trains, overhead

or bikers closing in.

I’ve heard some eagles or falcons, know not to

fly so high, so when they descend, they don’t die.

Where do birds go when it rain? Do they scout out

locations where earthworms will lie drowning?

Must they form notes on electrical wires, next to

hanging sneakers, and sing with the sirens?

There is a bird in my stomach that eats butterflies. 

Named

I’ve been sleeping on the dining room table, lately,

wondering if I should have been named after someone

in the Bible.

But, I’ve never read the Bible, so I would probably

just forge my name anyway, on time cards, if I had

a job that paid.

When I was kid, I wrote my name in drying cement

and misspelled it, but I wasn’t embarrassed. I lie

about my middle name all the time.

In grade school, I’d write my name across the top

of the page, and wondered if my name would fit

on the back of a jersey. 

Would the letters dovetail off? Would the missing letters

form a new name? My mother skips our three final

letters and just ends ___ like after a death on a heart monitor. 

mind blowers

Come On All You Ghosts by Matthew Zapruder

The poem I read on NPR out of Nox by Anne Carson

Carrier Wave by Jaswinder Bolina, who came to visit my poetry class, and seemed cool, and who has an awesome name

Jesus' Son by Dennis Johnson, which kicked me twice in the shins, especially since I had read 'Emergency' last quarter and didn't particularly love it.

Feb. Likes/Dislikes

Likes: Super Sad Love Story's abbreviations (real and fiction), finding out lmao means laughing my ass off and not lame-o, the last 40 pages of Gilead and the race issue underlying it, a banana Slurpee before drinking a Blue Moon while watching Two Towers, how bad ass Aragon is,1554s, New Castles, Marker's Mark, a 25 year old or so dust covered bottle of Jim Beam Whiskey that has been sitting in my parent's basement that served as my first (legal) shot, a Left Hand Fade to Black (first legal beer bought) The Stand Ins and every other Okkervil River album, 60 degree weather, all the snow melting!, Neutral Milk Hotel, The Name of the Nearest River by Alex Taylor, White Walls by  Tatyana Tolstya (the second best 21st birthday gift, from my sparrow), a hand drawn Blackhawks drawing by my little second cousin (the best 21st birthday gift), beef jerky as a birthday gift as well as memory foam mattress and a New Pornographers charity tee shirt, O.R. tee shirt, posters for both bands, discounted valentines day candy,  Five Guys Burgers, buying Inception for 9 bucks at Target, Will Sheff on twitter, Blake Griffin jumping over a car in the slam dunk contest, spring training, Tetris on my phone being addictive, Andy and April together on Parks and Rec., being charmed by my professor, Superman ice cream, Reese’s ice cream bars, DePaul finally breaking their losing streak

Dislikes: blue pit stains (thanks Old Spice Aqua Reef for messing up my new pocketed white tee), scraping my right hand on a rusty Bronco and the scar running across my knuckles, seeing people in shorts in this weather, allergies going whack because of the warm weather, half of the flavors of valentine conversation hearts sucking (strawberry, grape and a very disappointing blue raspberry), films without subtitles, the pimple/volcano on my neck that won't die, deciding where to hang my posters, having to wait two days to sleep on my memory foam mattress, Justin Beiber, Amtrak being extremely slow and having a two hour delay going down to U of I, Blake Griffin jumping over a car in the slam dunk contest, Tetris on my phone ruining my life, forgetting that I have ice cream in the freezer, my coworkers going on a “diet” of unripe strawberries and ham sandwiches and making me feel fat when I order out, a 9 dollar margarita at Chilli’s that wasn’t good, having to go to Chilli’s, internet not working correctly, DePaul losing heartbreakingly close games in overtime against ranked teams,