life has be insanely, frantically, tear-inducingly busy lately, so i apologize for leaving you hanging re: my trip back from north carolina. it will come. in the meantime, i shall re-purpose my writing assignments for class and give you a bit of poetry.
Matter
I have a list of what I would change
if I could remake this body.
as if I could revise
the shape of my waist
the taper of my calves
the unseen bones of my wrists.
When I was fourteen they called me
monster-- the boys
with stepladder voices and downy mouths.
Monster. The word measured my mass
against the value of flat bellies
and coltish legs
and by some
trick of
physics
made me
less.
16.1.11
the trip to north carolina part ii: snaps and bootses reunited
i know you've all been waiting with bated breath for part two of my trip to north carolina. suffer no longer, gentle readers! welcome to part ii: snaps and bootses* reunited.
13.1.11
sidenote: a bit of poetry
i'm interrupting the story-telling stream to talk about something else that i've been working on.
i can’t seem to get away from poetry. in my first round of college, i took creative writing with the hopes of polishing my fiction writing, and i ended up with a poet as a teacher. he taught us forms and how to write the concrete before ever touching the abstract. he was cranky and dry and he had lived the best love story i have ever heard in my life. i idolized him.
in this second round, i’ve signed up for creative writing again, hoping for another chance tackle fiction. my teacher is a poet again— this time with iron-gray hair and a butterfly mind.
our first assignment was a tanka— think haiku-plus, the darling of thousand-year-old japanese poets and ezra pound. five syllables, seven, five, seven, seven. something more or less concrete, with a question mark turn at the last two lines, all painted over with assonance, consonance, and alliteration.
she lies in soft folds,
kept warm by her self-made heat,
her face smooth with sleep—
her palm cools against the skin
of his undented pillow.
i can’t seem to get away from poetry. in my first round of college, i took creative writing with the hopes of polishing my fiction writing, and i ended up with a poet as a teacher. he taught us forms and how to write the concrete before ever touching the abstract. he was cranky and dry and he had lived the best love story i have ever heard in my life. i idolized him.
in this second round, i’ve signed up for creative writing again, hoping for another chance tackle fiction. my teacher is a poet again— this time with iron-gray hair and a butterfly mind.
our first assignment was a tanka— think haiku-plus, the darling of thousand-year-old japanese poets and ezra pound. five syllables, seven, five, seven, seven. something more or less concrete, with a question mark turn at the last two lines, all painted over with assonance, consonance, and alliteration.
she lies in soft folds,
kept warm by her self-made heat,
her face smooth with sleep—
her palm cools against the skin
of his undented pillow.
11.1.11
the trip to north carolina, part i: the first encounter with chicago
my sister jennifer moved to north carolina with her husband this past march, much to my dismay. it's not that i don't like her husband. he's darling. it's just that i'm reeeeally attached to my immediate family, and i liked having them all within a half-day's drive of me. i was looking forward to having jennifer and her husband come back for christmas, but then i got the message-- they weren't going to be able to make it out here. so what did i do? i scraped money together and went into a bit of debt to go out there instead. here is part one of the (probably) three-part series about this trip-- the flight out there and my first encounter with the evil entity that is the o'hare airport.
9.1.11
brenda's radio silence explained
okay, let's say, hypothetically, that you have a friend name phyllis. phyllis is a swell girl and you love spending time with her. you work with her, you hang out with her after work... you even live with her. you see phyllis all the time, and even though you adore her, you start getting really sick of her. you start to notice that she has a really annoying laugh that sounds like a recording and that she always eats her chicken caesar salad in a particular way that drives you insane and suddenly you find yourself seriously considering living in your car just so you can get away from her.
writing is my phyllis. i write for a living, i write for a pastime, i write as my main form of communication, and eventually i start to resent the feeling of computer keys and the proper use of commas. i start avoiding blogger, because every time i look at my dashboard it gives me this chilly look and is all "oh, hello there. i seem to remember you from somewhere, but it's been so long."
sigh.
i am trying to make amends, though. writing and me-- we're stuck together. can't live without it, so i may as well try to get along with it. here's to new years, new leaves, and making amends, right?
writing is my phyllis. i write for a living, i write for a pastime, i write as my main form of communication, and eventually i start to resent the feeling of computer keys and the proper use of commas. i start avoiding blogger, because every time i look at my dashboard it gives me this chilly look and is all "oh, hello there. i seem to remember you from somewhere, but it's been so long."
sigh.
i am trying to make amends, though. writing and me-- we're stuck together. can't live without it, so i may as well try to get along with it. here's to new years, new leaves, and making amends, right?
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