"La Donna e Mobile..."
Oct. 4th, 2011 07:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
psalm_onethirtyoneMy heart has just been broken, so I'm going to post some poetry from my independent study.
First, two old poems revised:
Apeirophilia
On Sunday nights, when our father drove his rust red car
home from our grandmother’s house in the dark
we half fell asleep in the backseat listening
to the hum of tires on pavement
and the minor chords of folk singers.
When we get lost, we get really lost
like a metaphor for our souls or my car keys behind the refrigerator
and it takes time to put us back where we meant to be.
Somewhere in the middle of the woods
I look up
like always
and the stars are all wrong.
No matter how much poetry I try to write
I feel dried-up and silent, like some voiceless mermaid.
On Monday nights, I lie awake wondering:
you’ve always known the way to everything
but if I don’t get lost with you
how am I going to get back home?
We could go deep into the ocean, deep
into the planet-wide house of things far older than anything we know
to volcanic columns covered with ghost shrimp,
to the electric pulse of tiny jellyfish,
little stars against the black sea sky.
I could find my poetry again, deep
in some lightless rift or mud-bottomed chapel
patterned with the hexagon paths
of paleodictyon.
On Tuesday nights, I put away my writing
and go to the square dancing dinners
where people are made of earth,
solid and brown as potatoes.
Somewhere on the middle of the sea
I look up
and the stars have rearranged somehow.
I want to dive in, but I remember you
and our car rides home
and the words that are somewhere,
folded up with some winter blankets,
maybe I’ll find them in December.
And suddenly there you are,
making a compass with your hands,
your fingers spread wide
to point our way home.
I walk out with you on the waves.
Somewhere beneath me, those electric pulses
are reflecting our constellations.
---
Song for a Friend
In the South we spend the hot still nights
lying awake in the dark under the ceiling fan that
rattles and bucks,
its long chain shaking in the air. We
sift the sound of cicadas through our tired ears
as the dogs whimper and kick, dream-running on the rug.
After the Fourth of July show, we wade home,
barefoot on the hot asphalt, threading through the
families, couples, and drunk college kids,
the afterglow of fireworks
hazing the black sky. The faint white stars
struggle through the smoke.
When we were lovers
you bought me glow-in-the-dark necklaces
and bracelets
and we joked about driving your Ford in the parade,
me perched on a wicker-back chair in the open bed in my Sunday dress.
Some people are never friends again,
but you and I are still sitting on the porch with our too-sweet ice tea,
sharing our spoils from the Sewanee street fair.
So we’re lucky. And if I miss you--
lying on the empty-shell beach of Lake Cheston
with your head in my lap and my hands in your hair--
if I lie awake on hot nights, chrysanthemum fireworks burning in showers
against my closed eyes and the smoky stars
smelling Jubilee beer and the lake and your moon-slim body--
The dogs cry beneath the water-stained coffee table
where I left my empty tea glass.
They’re also longing for something that isn’t there,
their feet beating silent against the still air.
--
One new poem:
One Week
Somehow I forget in one week
wet hay
the red sweep of broom corn
the guineas exploding into flight
the way the cats slink in and out of your consciousness
appearing on the front steps or staring pointedly
out of a spray of timothy.
In farm time a month has passed without me;
two of the turkeys I hand-raised from birth are
dead, mourned, forgotten.
The red pigs are taller, fatter,
the tomatoes rotting on the ground,
a new fence in the white barn field, a new set of steps
for the brooder shed.
The creek has already flooded and
receded, with disdain for our panic
over low fields of meadow grass
too wet to cut.
The summer-old chickens wander the long bottom
leaving brown and blue eggs in their straw-lined boxes
like mysterious jewels.
Someone has declared a stay of execution for
the bold hen who scratches for bugs
in the roots of the hops that climb the barn wall
reaching for the rain-lined sky.
In one week our old mouser has
reached the edge of death; our young mare
has turned from bronze to fawn gold;
our beer has fermented, our apple trees fruited,
and our red tractor changed hands a half dozen times
traded for a neighbour’s blue Ford.
But my greedy fish still splash the surface of the pond
the sickle bar is still broken
the bees still stacked three hive bodies deep
and my bedroom still smells like cinnamon and balsam.
The week is gone
but I come home.
---
And one poem that the professor (correctly) told me could not probably ever be a "good" poem, but "has some interesting ideas, and is an unusual experiment in a new form for you".
Closure
my little dragon heart is roaring
burnt and burning
also wanting
bitter, strident,
also yearning
my peppercorn round heart is rolling
round my tongue and
also wary
don’t dare bite it
risk it cracking
also doubting
don’t look round and don’t ask questions
hot star falling
sharp eye closing
one straight path that’s strung with lanterns
also pointing
also knowing
my little dragon heart is roaring
pepper in my throat is burning
lanterns hanging, also glowing
also wanting
also yearning
lead the way back
always wary
to a dark place, muted, cooling
fire dies down there
always knowing
cracked and whole now,
cracked and whole.
First, two old poems revised:
Apeirophilia
On Sunday nights, when our father drove his rust red car
home from our grandmother’s house in the dark
we half fell asleep in the backseat listening
to the hum of tires on pavement
and the minor chords of folk singers.
When we get lost, we get really lost
like a metaphor for our souls or my car keys behind the refrigerator
and it takes time to put us back where we meant to be.
Somewhere in the middle of the woods
I look up
like always
and the stars are all wrong.
No matter how much poetry I try to write
I feel dried-up and silent, like some voiceless mermaid.
On Monday nights, I lie awake wondering:
you’ve always known the way to everything
but if I don’t get lost with you
how am I going to get back home?
We could go deep into the ocean, deep
into the planet-wide house of things far older than anything we know
to volcanic columns covered with ghost shrimp,
to the electric pulse of tiny jellyfish,
little stars against the black sea sky.
I could find my poetry again, deep
in some lightless rift or mud-bottomed chapel
patterned with the hexagon paths
of paleodictyon.
On Tuesday nights, I put away my writing
and go to the square dancing dinners
where people are made of earth,
solid and brown as potatoes.
Somewhere on the middle of the sea
I look up
and the stars have rearranged somehow.
I want to dive in, but I remember you
and our car rides home
and the words that are somewhere,
folded up with some winter blankets,
maybe I’ll find them in December.
And suddenly there you are,
making a compass with your hands,
your fingers spread wide
to point our way home.
I walk out with you on the waves.
Somewhere beneath me, those electric pulses
are reflecting our constellations.
---
Song for a Friend
In the South we spend the hot still nights
lying awake in the dark under the ceiling fan that
rattles and bucks,
its long chain shaking in the air. We
sift the sound of cicadas through our tired ears
as the dogs whimper and kick, dream-running on the rug.
After the Fourth of July show, we wade home,
barefoot on the hot asphalt, threading through the
families, couples, and drunk college kids,
the afterglow of fireworks
hazing the black sky. The faint white stars
struggle through the smoke.
When we were lovers
you bought me glow-in-the-dark necklaces
and bracelets
and we joked about driving your Ford in the parade,
me perched on a wicker-back chair in the open bed in my Sunday dress.
Some people are never friends again,
but you and I are still sitting on the porch with our too-sweet ice tea,
sharing our spoils from the Sewanee street fair.
So we’re lucky. And if I miss you--
lying on the empty-shell beach of Lake Cheston
with your head in my lap and my hands in your hair--
if I lie awake on hot nights, chrysanthemum fireworks burning in showers
against my closed eyes and the smoky stars
smelling Jubilee beer and the lake and your moon-slim body--
The dogs cry beneath the water-stained coffee table
where I left my empty tea glass.
They’re also longing for something that isn’t there,
their feet beating silent against the still air.
--
One new poem:
One Week
Somehow I forget in one week
wet hay
the red sweep of broom corn
the guineas exploding into flight
the way the cats slink in and out of your consciousness
appearing on the front steps or staring pointedly
out of a spray of timothy.
In farm time a month has passed without me;
two of the turkeys I hand-raised from birth are
dead, mourned, forgotten.
The red pigs are taller, fatter,
the tomatoes rotting on the ground,
a new fence in the white barn field, a new set of steps
for the brooder shed.
The creek has already flooded and
receded, with disdain for our panic
over low fields of meadow grass
too wet to cut.
The summer-old chickens wander the long bottom
leaving brown and blue eggs in their straw-lined boxes
like mysterious jewels.
Someone has declared a stay of execution for
the bold hen who scratches for bugs
in the roots of the hops that climb the barn wall
reaching for the rain-lined sky.
In one week our old mouser has
reached the edge of death; our young mare
has turned from bronze to fawn gold;
our beer has fermented, our apple trees fruited,
and our red tractor changed hands a half dozen times
traded for a neighbour’s blue Ford.
But my greedy fish still splash the surface of the pond
the sickle bar is still broken
the bees still stacked three hive bodies deep
and my bedroom still smells like cinnamon and balsam.
The week is gone
but I come home.
---
And one poem that the professor (correctly) told me could not probably ever be a "good" poem, but "has some interesting ideas, and is an unusual experiment in a new form for you".
Closure
my little dragon heart is roaring
burnt and burning
also wanting
bitter, strident,
also yearning
my peppercorn round heart is rolling
round my tongue and
also wary
don’t dare bite it
risk it cracking
also doubting
don’t look round and don’t ask questions
hot star falling
sharp eye closing
one straight path that’s strung with lanterns
also pointing
also knowing
my little dragon heart is roaring
pepper in my throat is burning
lanterns hanging, also glowing
also wanting
also yearning
lead the way back
always wary
to a dark place, muted, cooling
fire dies down there
always knowing
cracked and whole now,
cracked and whole.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-04 11:54 pm (UTC)I disagree with your professor that the last poem could ever be "good." Who decides what's good, anyway? I happened to like it.
Are you okay? ♥
(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-04 11:58 pm (UTC)It's just. It's not very good, actually, which I knew when I submitted it -- I wasn't begging for compliments, honestly. We've been revising it for a long time and still haven't got it to sound right, but it is a total break in form for me, which is pretty cool -- even if it isn't going to go anywhere, it was fun to try using a trochaic metre and experimenting with line rhythm. But I think it has some good ideas, it's just not very complete and it doesn't hold together as well as I'd like.
I'm fine! Just disappointed.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-05 04:52 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-05 05:06 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-05 01:41 am (UTC)<3 I'm sorry about your heart.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-05 02:40 am (UTC)♥
(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-05 01:46 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-05 02:40 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-05 02:14 am (UTC)i have a question i hope it is not weird. i really like your poetry and i have a little book i keep where i write down poems and sayings that i like, could i put some of your poems in it? i would credit you however you like
but ofc i understand if you don't want me to that is all ok <3
(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-05 02:40 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-05 10:40 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-05 12:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-09 09:04 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-10-09 05:19 pm (UTC)