Nothing...just musings

I've been trying to write Portland all week, or take pictures, but all I seem compelled to do is shop, and take things back from here. It's been the most delicious week-- I just brought the sweetest strawberries in the world from the Farmer's Market. Went on a perfectly pleasant lunch with Becky, and pretended like my whole life here was still real.

The whole point of this blog is to work on old stuff, but everything Kentucky seems silly right now-- not silly but at least not as tragic (which I think is a good thing).

it's been truly a vacation.

Bergin, KY

Since I wrote a Frankfort and a Clifton poem, and I worked on a Midway one I had this idea that I would make a series of poems about small towns around here . This is the free write that came out. Still not really a poem-- need to do some serious line making and breaking, but I thought again I'd save it on here.

This is the only restaurant in town, but we all like
fried catfish, and fried green tomatoes, and country
fried steak—except Dad, who had a heart
attack five years ago and eats little bits off
everyone’s plate,
and looks sad
like someone shooed him from his mother’s kitchen.

We never eat anymore at places
with plastic tablecloths, even if they are the heavy plastic, easier
to clean, red checkered. It sticks to my legs,
already itching of mosquito bites and smelling
like the lake water.

I am uncomfortable, but it is summer and
the grease hits up with the air and
dances with old men’s cigarette smoke, and suddenly
my stomach hurts and I want to leave.

it’s not that I don’t like it, it just makes me sick.
fried food, and smoke, and sticky plastic
tablecloths and all the things I came from.

I love it there, but I can only stay a little,
eat a little, before I have to breathe.

Packing Up

I found another little thread of the Unpacking Poem that I'd done this year and completely forgotten about until I cleaned up my computer last night. I'll do some work on it later, but I wanted to put it on the blog for safe-keeping. It needs some line breaks and an intentional form.

Packing Up

I know who you felt-
that everything should be handled
that life was bounding, and if you could hold each one in your hand, and think around it,
it would come back to your doorstep. If you could cradle each vase, each dried
hydrangea, each pair of scissors and scrap of fabric, then life would come together
like an unfinished porch project.

I feel like that some days too, look in the mirror at myself walking
thoughtfully around the house. Peeking into the bathroom mirror, half
expecting to see you.

It would be sad, on that day, when the movers came, and the landlord, and the new renters,
when you sat, weary-eyed on the porch steps, trailing smoke and taking long breaths. Too far gone to feel the shame of leaving late, like a guest at a long past party, waiting on the porch for the ride that never came.

more moving...worn out

I'm tired, physically and mentally exhausted from moving, but if you can hang in there with me for a few more days I'll be on a mini-vacation and I'll be writing. At least the plan is to be writing, and reading, and drinking wonderful coffee and real beer. Portland here I come!

I have no way of knowing if anyone's reading, but I'll keep pretending like I have an audience just dying for new work.

R

Clifton (draft II)

This river is mother to us all,
brother,

even tonight,
under a thin layer of frost, curled
like a sleeping black snake.

Half a world away, could we
imagine, this
awkward blessing,

side by side, staring down
at the tips of our boots

with the nothing to say?

It’s in our raising—
sitting still and listening
hands crooked in jean pockets

watching
the dark ground
for the first sighs of spring.

Clifton (draft I)

I can't seem to get my mind off the river today. Here's something old that I keep coming back to.

Clifton

In early December the waterfalls have frozen to icicles
on the cliff
the bank here is low and the river is still.

Our breath freezes and hangs, hands in the pockets
I think suddenly of farmers and country folks
distant cousins and old uncles- who walk with their
hands in their pockets and their heads bowed.
after years of pouring a life steadily like concrete,

I find my balance like that-
mittens crooked in jeans and eyes fixed on the
frozen glaciers of mud.

Walking slowly, we are weighted down by
the familiarity of sky, stars, and a milk-full moon
we have known half a world away

Tonight we are side-by-side, silent,
against the black curves of the river.

Frankfort

This one is just a free write for now, more of a list than a poem, but let me know if you see anything worth keeping.

It was comfortable, in your
robins egg blue shack, speckled
dirty, nesting in a tiny
hollow, between the cliffs.

It was always too hot, or too cold,
or it leaked when it rained,
but really the bed was warm
and it felt like home .

One night a landslide took
the yards on the big houses,
but we were safe,
and walked
down the road
to the Cliffside Diner
for milkshakes thick
as air off the river.

Later, you played guitar in an
old camp chair while
the mosquitos bit my ankles.

All summer you dug postholes
and I held the level

secretly dreaming we
were building—we were balancing
a life together.

Take the I Out

Here's a perfect poem for my most recent writing freak-out, the fact that I seem to be stuck in first person and can't "get the I out" of my work. Lori-Lyn from my writing group (KaPow) helped me feel better about it by sending me the Sharon Old's poem I linked below. Maybe I'll play around more once I make the big leap to the world of MFA'ers, but for now I'm going use I as freely as I want.

Take the I Out by Sharon Olds

I i I i I i I i I i I i I i I i I i I i I i I i I i I i I i

Due North (draft IV)

Driving north

in mid-November
winds whip
even the telephone poles

and coal black flocks
scatter like

particles of science
and space filter through
the radio.

Am I reeling from
the tilt of the earth's axis

or the loss of you?

Across the melliniums
the North Star shifts

darkness makes
way for darkness
as the light passes.

I can see ahead for miles-
wheat less fields
gone to harvest.

Unpacking (draft I)

Today I am exhausted from packing up my life into brown boxes, from taking down my pictures, setting away my books, and from picking my clothes out of a suitcase everyday. It reminds me of a poem that I tried to write years ago. I wouldn't even know where to find the draft anymore, but I still remember the first line- the rest is just me playing.

I have been unpacking her for years.

Fragile and old, each china cup
must be dusted, and wrapped in
tissue paper tan and wrinkled
like her soft skin.

She is a found poem. Bunches of dried
lavender hydrangeas and waxy
jade magnolia leaves bundled
in the closet.

Even with the doors open the
house is musky with the
air of old movie stars, Chanel
and Virginia Slims.

In the black and white reel
she was running on

no one would come in six
months to see her out. She would
not sit quietly on the back steps,
smoking, in a sea of homeless things.

Read this first

Hello friends. Fellow writers. Welcome to my latest experiment.

I've headed online with the editing process. It's a little tedious to shift through, but I'm putting multiple drafts of my most unfinished pieces online and hoping that someone wants to read them AND if you're a really dedicated friend, to comment on what works and doesn't for you (whoa run on sentence...but I'm leaving it because it's a blog and I feel free).

I won't post anything I feel is delicate or finished so please be as raw and honest as you can/ have time be. Thanks for reading!

The only thing that frustrates me about blogging is that you can't rearrange the posts. You'll see I never do anything in any kind of logical order.

R

Due North (draft II)

In mid-November
even the telephone poles
are wind-whipped.

I am driving home
for the first time
in five years.

Against the glowing
opal sky
the coal black
flocks retreat-

Cresting a low hill
the pyres
of twisted summer boughs
burn red gold
along the shoulder.

In five thousand
years even the north
star will
shift,

due North never
changes, but
its marker will.

Nestled in the
driver’s seat, the
shift of the earth’s
axis is only
the curve of the road.

After an early harvest
the wheatless fields
are stripped
like beds made ready
for winter blankets.

Due North (draft I)

Driving North
in mid-November
even the telephone poles
are wind-whipped.

Against the glowing
opal sky -
the coal black flocks retreat.

Cresting a low hill
the pyres
of twisted summer bougs
burn red gold along the shoulder.

After an early harvest
the wheatless fields
are stripped
like beds made ready
for winter blankets.

Nestled into
the drivers seat
I feel the shift of the earth's axis-
across the millenniums
even the role of the
North Star passes.

Due North (draft III)

Driving north in mid-November
even the telephone poles
are wind whipped.

Against an opal sky
coal black flocks retreat.

Particles of science and space
filter through the radio. A clipped
woman's voice explains

star shift across the millenniums.
Due North never changes
while it's markers slowly will.

Without you

this is no
home coming. The twisted
summer boughs are red gold
pyres along the hills.

My bones and these wheels
know the way to empty sidewalks,
empty houses and a boarded up
downtown.

This is North,
just past the wheatless fields,
harvest-stripped of love.

truth must be
just East of here.