Day Four

for Maurice

one time           i had horses

millions of them

             until floating became something

small enough

                        to slip into people’s drinks,

my knees suddenly too weak

to be held onto,

too many foot noises

                        and my own wandering

            grip

people are too lonely

                                                            and mountain like

   to be neighbors

so many drinks hugging skin, slipping

   me

beneath     my seat

long hair is not even that pretty

                                    just as

a poem needs to   throw up

a little

   sometimes,

we find out the accuracy

of liquids

I am no longer     of  identity,

    better

    than grasshoppers  and  ants

these things aren’t important,

            but they’re enough to be

like sleeping     again,

of the waking up

  habits of birdlife,

suddenly,         cold bathwater

and guns lying around,

                        i could        maybe

            shoot melting snow,    running

water, dripping  

            icicles

if that ever happened,                   

i can    go         like this      and

roll right onto you,

   but i have a hard time

        keeping the letters flat

around here,

words share the properties

  of

poorly cut metal, misplaced napkins, water

  more ice cubes than one breath could reach

and that’s life without kissing, anyway,

just my face

  pushing   up

against

            your face

Day Three

“The most elementary mode of expansion occurs through one’s father, the first presence of an outsider in an infant’s life.” “But men as fathers also play roles of long-lasting importance in their babies.” In this way, each infant born is both physically and socially identified. Within a particular public, its mother and “not its father” belong. When a child is born, its “father” finds a name from practice, [the] child usually called by [a] name that it receives from its “father.” The removal of the name, however, is a time to live continued, or on her own. No loan to be well taken care of. The child can pass the name. His child, her baby, she and with her parents, and no one public about being husbandless or about a child being “fatherless.” Yet the situation is not without emotion. A child “without a father,” even though denied a necessary noting, is socially disadvantaged. Not to have a “father” is to lose the contribution, is so important, but also represented by the similarities in oneself, by its mother, social potential. To gain from the ties [made] available. To be “fatherless” is to be socially essential parts. When a married couple has a baby, the claim of the “father’s” is that it is not expressed as necessary growth, to the fetus at birth, physical between infant and “father.” When necessary, how much the “father resembles” the infant. “In the case of Sara’s “fatherless” baby, there was no public discussion about whom it resembled, although in private I heard how much it looked like its mother’s former lover.”

Day Two

a little ways back

            i remember          you

stirring, stirring

feeling odd about             fathers, money, long fences

                                                where people stick their faces

                                                            and weep downward

thinking about    wrapping up  backgrounds

in other colors

            like pink, leather, bad conclusions,

always      a kind of adjusting

always     about money, too expensive

                                                            so

i escape the bills

                               by paying them in curls of hair

or        

       erasing the parts about me  or

sending them little conversations

about weight, my fear       of

  sitting down with mirrors,     distraction,      practicing my

           

                           little girl legs, so much uncrossing involved

           

and by bills, i mean       recollection

the things i owe you

                           for                 displacement

for the chair next to me

where my name sat (my will to stomp)

for saying, break these  in half       again,

to see them      little parts        

me         

and it gets easier

                                                also, to leave

the things that get stuck   between fingers,     teeth,

                                                       two lonely people

names become the stuck in between pieces

                                    other faces

we never think about               

                                               

                                                anything,    but

hugs   and   puking   and

removing the pieces,

all the women               who don’t know me

            who are a few years older than me

and the mirrors, disgusting        like axe blades,                   i wanted to try them on

but

people keep taking off their reflections

it becomes     the only thing    i can’t look away from

near your face,

                        not always easy to     distinguish you from          

without becoming your
        little handfuls
of bones

Day One

everything i know          somehow

feels like     warm metal

   the opposite of   nesting

the texture of          stuttering, still trying        to shut       the window

   before i have a chance to

            squint

the way you do, the cold air coming in

or in public,

            i only remember what not to wear

                 not to be spherical, not round like

things i’d secretly give away

                ornaments without names

it doesn’t bother me      when they disappear

or when ice cream goes away

but    i sometimes reach back too far,

try to    instead of undoing

try to                wait

so as to take      the things that could

get me   something

but

i get   upset

            about money,   dirty water, & cover designs

people whose alarm clocks

            add letters

to the places i already stand near

a pushing, a                  push, or nothing

                                    down

like   the lack of time      given

to the people

  with the dirtiest hands

            so much time disgusts me

how you offer               things

like: words, sentences, whole letters

            you’ll send them out for me, whatever

i need more room

  for being late,

the                    audience

already moving toward     goodbye,

my knees shaking             hours

before i’m even thought about,

the house flinching,   always nervous

always waiting,   how it can be so full

                                    of chlorine,

it is so much of

    why I sleep

living things

I was recently email-discussing the idea of poems being finished...the anxiety of the "THIS IS DONE" thing, I believe is how it went.  And I thought about a reading at this last AWP, where Sawako Nakayasu read--among other things--a couple of my favorite poems from her latest book, Texture Notes.  At one point, she spoke about how she believes poems are these constantly living, changing things, even after they've been published.  She then read a piece originally in English, except when she read it, there were lines of Japanese glittered throughout.  It was a beautiful meshing that was read so skillfully that even a trained ear surely struggled to draw lines between the two languages--let alone my own amateur self trying to recognize even a portion of her Japanese.  I knew enough to notice that opposites were at play between the two languages, but that's besides the point; the point is, I often feel like I'm off limits from messing with something once it's been printed, maybe even once it's been shared with a certain group of people.  And while I found Sawako's thoughts to be inspiring and assuring, I still struggle with an obsessive type of attachment to certain states of poems.

And then these last few days happened, and I started hearing about NaPoWriMo, a lot.  Everybody's plans, sites where poems will be shared.  And while I've lingered back and forth regarding what I'm gonna do with the poems I plan on writing everyday throughout April, I found myself coming back to this blog and wanting to revamp it and post them here.  But a lot of things have changed in my life since I was blogging here; I'm reminded of that by almost every entry.  So I started feeling the need to edit the old entries, reword things, and possibly delete a few posts altogether.  It's not at all a blocking out, or a sort of hiding.  I just think there's a need to feel like I'm in an appropriate space, to feel comfortable based on my life, right now, in this place where I'll be sharing things.  It'll probably seem a bit sad, even, taking certain stuff away, and remembering how I felt when I was first compiling these words and pictures.  And for that, I'm gonna leave a lot of old things up.  But as I found myself opening posts and changing a word here, a word there, I remembered my less digital, more physical instincts, and Sawako's words, and my struggle with where I stand regarding them.  And I thought about how funny it seems that I have no problem changing something on a blog, but would not be able to perform these same actions on these same exact sets of words and ideas and photos, were they physically resting in my hands.  And I mean that literally and emotionally.  I couldn't do it.




I recently got my first acceptance to have a poem published.  It's an online journal, and while the email thrilled me, I find myself wondering how different I would feel--how much more "legitimate" it may seem to tell people--were it a copy I could hand directly to someone.  (And how much of that really is based on the "people," on the others who I will share the news with, which branches off into this idea of "recognition" and another email talk I've been having recently which, I suppose, is a different post altogether).  Half the email responses I get these days have "sent from my iphone" at the end of them, some kind of miniature, contracted version of the already filtered online selves we present to people.  It's not unusual to feel like I find out more about my friends through Facebook than anywhere else.  And so often it's the really intricately personal details that come about online.  Or the random, meaningless statements that aren't trying to belong to a particular part of someone's heteroglossia, which can end up feeling very intimate and revealing.  Although "Facebook speech" could surely be argued as one portion of heteroglossia in itself.  I guess the safety in the distance created online is nothing new.  But I'm wondering when we will begin to question the things that do have physicality to them, things that have weight, that can be placed on shelves.  How far away is the time when I will tell someone I've got a new poem somewhere, and go to hand them a copy of its existence, only to find that I'm given a strange, suspicious look...




I am NOT going to delete anything that was a part of my original goal; this will be my constraint.  But I may edit.  I've got older poems up here that I read now and have no idea how to feel about.  I have a filter that automatically pops up, telling me that this is something I would not have written today.  I start wanting to translate myself into the 2011 version, although even within a year, where I'm at in this distinct world of poetry that I tend to grab onto varies so incredibly much.  And I'm still trying to figure out how to deal with that, what kind of sense to make of things outside this moment.  How can I write this poem, this essay, this exact post in a way that will still feel friendly and comfortable a year from today?  But even more than that, I would like to find the charm within that sort of self-uncomfortableness.

at the AWP in denver, colorado

some things i realized while i was there:

1. more is not always better when it comes to books.

2. more is often better when it comes to rainbows.

3. i have drinking limits

4. language is only and even a material

5. the letter "u" can be really dirty

6. i will probably always be a starbucks yuppy

7. alone-time is underrated

8. expensive hotels can be really nice

9. there are a lot of things i'm not sure about

10. there is something to be said about fake plastic dripping blood

11. books are much heavier than clothes

12. language is everywhere

13. language is everywhere

14. people are very similar in many ways

Poem as magnetic field

he hates the feel of work
her father
growing money in the garden
all wrapped up in paper and canary gold
foil and pretty looks in the pictures
she'd wake up on the driveway eating
radishes in red teeth
her mother drove
death like wind carrying pearls like
they do in high fashion
magazines
like girls wear pinecones
inside their hair and talk to each other
in opposites
she thanked death's
sway and taught people to feed camels
the sea foamed at night
when she traced water onto scratch-paper
absorbing expression and the
grass fleeing when it got too wet
now she freezes midway among
ornaments hanging in the attic
she waits for the sea
like her camels coming home.