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psalm_onethirtyoneFinal three poems:
Assignment: Write a poem about the following secret: I practise bestiality.
::Shunga::
the Japanese prints of pale-breasted women
modestly draped by brushstrokes of black hair
and coiling pastel tentacles
kissing with carefully-inked suckers
between their thighs,
fishermen’s wives who throw their heads back
to feel those stylised foam-dotted waves crash home--
those women are all me.
the half-mast slanted eyes, the
boneless writhing of arm and arm and arm and arm and arm
and arm--
the cool climax half salt and all water, the
ink running down like hot black blood--
with cephalopod mouths pressed to
the half-buried sea-caves of their
sex, their coral areolae--
me
me me me me
me.
---
Assignment: Write a poem to answer the following three questions: What would you do as water? What would you do with no past? How could you punish a baby?
Afterbirth
Infinite
is what you become
sitting in your orange jumpsuit
looking into the stone wall for something gone:
no past no present
just the echo of your own lullaby.
They don’t call you out for exercise in the yard
any more. They don’t touch you
in the showers.
Tough new women with tattoos and scars
circle you wide in the cafeteria.
What did she do? they ask.
And you know if you were water you
would circle down these pipes, tumble out to sea,
get lost
inside a million-million other molecules of identical
Hs and Os. You would be nothing. You would
feel as much nothing
as you do now.
Infinite nothing.
Her baby was crying, someone says.
And she shook it till it died.
---
Assignment: Write a poem about anything.
Dénouement and Curtain
What can I tell you in the eleven minutes I
have left
to write a convincing manifesto of my time here
and your teaching? I
have been struggling through a slough, have
been pushing my way through the fog of
yet another
semester that turned out bigger than me. I
have been opening the skin of my body
like the wrapping paper of an unexciting present
to watch with disappointment
while the blood drains out--no surprise there. I
have been lying awake at night
staring at the perforated ceiling of my room
looking for stars in the off-white panels. I
have been keeping my head down
in class but
in the four minutes I have left before I
hand you my last chance to impress you
all I know is somehow I have got to bend these words
scrambling all unruly through my head
and tell you--eloquently--that
the chance to create something worthwhile
has made this fall worthwhile
and that’s a chance I
often feel
is leaving me.
Assignment: Write a poem about the following secret: I practise bestiality.
::Shunga::
the Japanese prints of pale-breasted women
modestly draped by brushstrokes of black hair
and coiling pastel tentacles
kissing with carefully-inked suckers
between their thighs,
fishermen’s wives who throw their heads back
to feel those stylised foam-dotted waves crash home--
those women are all me.
the half-mast slanted eyes, the
boneless writhing of arm and arm and arm and arm and arm
and arm--
the cool climax half salt and all water, the
ink running down like hot black blood--
with cephalopod mouths pressed to
the half-buried sea-caves of their
sex, their coral areolae--
me
me me me me
me.
---
Assignment: Write a poem to answer the following three questions: What would you do as water? What would you do with no past? How could you punish a baby?
Afterbirth
Infinite
is what you become
sitting in your orange jumpsuit
looking into the stone wall for something gone:
no past no present
just the echo of your own lullaby.
They don’t call you out for exercise in the yard
any more. They don’t touch you
in the showers.
Tough new women with tattoos and scars
circle you wide in the cafeteria.
What did she do? they ask.
And you know if you were water you
would circle down these pipes, tumble out to sea,
get lost
inside a million-million other molecules of identical
Hs and Os. You would be nothing. You would
feel as much nothing
as you do now.
Infinite nothing.
Her baby was crying, someone says.
And she shook it till it died.
---
Assignment: Write a poem about anything.
Dénouement and Curtain
What can I tell you in the eleven minutes I
have left
to write a convincing manifesto of my time here
and your teaching? I
have been struggling through a slough, have
been pushing my way through the fog of
yet another
semester that turned out bigger than me. I
have been opening the skin of my body
like the wrapping paper of an unexciting present
to watch with disappointment
while the blood drains out--no surprise there. I
have been lying awake at night
staring at the perforated ceiling of my room
looking for stars in the off-white panels. I
have been keeping my head down
in class but
in the four minutes I have left before I
hand you my last chance to impress you
all I know is somehow I have got to bend these words
scrambling all unruly through my head
and tell you--eloquently--that
the chance to create something worthwhile
has made this fall worthwhile
and that’s a chance I
often feel
is leaving me.
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(no subject)
Date: 2010-12-17 08:11 am (UTC)I love the others, too, especially the third. You get some pretty strange prompts, though, I must say!
(no subject)
Date: 2010-12-17 08:47 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-12-17 12:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-12-17 12:43 pm (UTC)Okay, backstory for the bestiality prompt. What we had to do was each write down a secret (real or imaginary), put them in the professor's hat, and then he mixed them up and we had to select one at random to write a poem about. The boys decided to see who could write the grossest prompt, because they are derps, and I got Matt's, which was the bestiality one. Sam's I believe was something like 'my armpit odour never goes away' and Dylan's was 'I haven't defecated in three days'. For real. So I think I actually got the mildest end of the spectrum, in terms of horrible prompts that would be hard to write a decent poem about.
With Afterbirth, we all had to write down one question; then the professor wrote all the questions on the board and we had to select any three to write a poem about.