Chapel

And they all laughed at the idea that this could be a sinister establishment:
Because they had no idea how trapped some people felt
In their little greenhouse of safety.

Java in the Afternoon [Poem Form]

Coffee teeters dangerously on the edge of a coffee mug,
The screaming face of the Peanuts cartoon character Lucy on the front. 
The table I sit at is wooden and stained; 
Scratched and covered with coffee ring crossing over coffee ring, 
Like a million penn diagrams spreading across the wood.  
There is a painting on the wall of a lone tree standing in the black of an oncoming storm. 
It is surrounded for miles by the bland, hot pale yellow of wheat. 
In the corner, opposite me, a boy sits alone, wearing plaid, concentrating like his life depends on it 
As he plays chess with no opponent. 

There are couches and tables with a mishmash of chairs; 
The coffee shop is a labyrinth. 
I once commiserated over the difficulty of navigation in here with a blind girl 
And felt like a jerk afterwords for ever complaining about trying to get anywhere. 
She laughed as she talked to me about the maze of furniture she had to wade through 
With only her walking stick as a guide. 
I smiled in response before realizing that she couldn't see me.

On a shelf there is a glass jar; more than a glass jar, it is a glass vase, maybe a sculpture. 
It undulates and curves in and out like a voluptuous woman. 
It is filled nearly to the top with coffee beans. 
This is a place where things brim;
Coffee brims, those beans brim, conversations brim, perhaps love brims.
     
All around, conversations ensue. 
Some people lean very close to the person across the table, 
Their conversations automatically appearing far more intimate and intense than the rest of ours 
Because of their body language. 
Perhaps they are lovers; perhaps they are merely close friends. 
Perhaps they have only recently met and their body language
Is indicative of that moment in a new meeting when you realize 
You have that connection with someone, 
That connection that signifies you are going to be friends 
For a very long time.

Relationship Series #3

So often I have sat

Feeling perfectly fine in body.

Yet my spirits have been low;

It is my heart that has ached

Today my whole body aches

Every movement brings

Internal groaning

Muscles screaming at me for stretching them out

But my heart-

My heart for once is light.

Java in the Afternoon

      Franz Ferdinand is playing on the speakers overhead as I sit at this corner table, as far from the other patrons as one can possibly get. Coffee teeters dangerously on the edge of a coffee mug with the screaming face of the Peanuts cartoon character Lucy on the front. Not exactly soothing, but I'll take it. The table I sit at is wooden and stained; scratched and covered with coffee ring crossing over coffee ring, like a million penn diagrams spreading across the wood. A lamp stands stalwartly, the red shade glowing softly from the bulb it hides, the pattern of moons lit like the nighttime stars. There is a painting on the wall of a lone tree standing in the black of an oncoming storm. It is surrounded for miles by the bland, hot pale yellow of wheat. In the corner, opposite me, a boy sits alone, wearing plaid, concentrating like his life depends on it as he plays chess with no opponent. This place is familiar to me, filled with familiar faces, friendly faces, faces I have spoken with, faces I have embraced, faces I have even come to love. There are couches and tables with a mishmash of chairs; the coffee shop is a labyrinth. I once commiserated over the difficulty of navigation in here with a blind girl and felt like a jerk afterwords for ever complaining about trying to get anywhere. She laughed as she talked to me about the maze of furniture she had to wade through with only her walking stick as a guide. I smiled in response before realizing that she couldn't see me.
      On a shelf there is a glass jar; more than a glass jar, it is a glass vase, maybe a sculpture. It undulates and curves in and out like a voluptuous woman. It is filled nearly to the top with coffee beans. This is a place where things brim. Coffee brims, those beans brim, conversations brim, perhaps love brims.
     An old familiar song comes on and we sing along; me and the girl sitting across from me, both here under the pretense of doing homework but instead we are singing along, because sometimes those songs come on, where you just need to sing too, and you know everyone's staring and judging in their heads, but in that moment it doesn't really matter.
       All around, conversations ensue. Some people lean very close to the person across the table, their conversations automatically appearing far more intimate and intense than the rest of ours because of their body language. Perhaps they are lovers; perhaps they are merely close friends. Perhaps they have only recently met and their body language is indicative of that moment in a new meeting when you realize you have that connection with someone, that connection that signifies you are going to be friends for a very long time.
       The last thing I note are the paper hearts hanging from the ceiling tiles, strategically placed all around the room as a warning, a reminder, the day of St. Valentine is fast approaching. Normally I would feel rather annoyed with this showy decoration that feels pushy and just a little too soon. But the playlist is good and the coffee is flowing and the wood of the table feels smooth yet rugged beneath my palms and today, I look up at the hearts and I find that I don't mind them. I don't mind them at all.

Relationship Series #2

Sometimes the thing that I want most in this whole world
Is to reach across this wooden table
And take your shaking hand in mine-
But then-
I remember-
I can't.

Drunk Preacher

When I was a child

It was a Baptist Church that dictated our lives

A high-ceilinged building that looked modest on the outside

Yet was imposing within

Filled with pews of stained wood, sewed over with cushions:

Stiff, and made up of a fabric that was a nondescript shade of blue

My parents were the Bible 

And thus my head was filled with grotesque scenarios

Of demon possession and Satan rape.

A friend 

Who went to a prestigious university in Boston to study neuroscience

Later explained to me that my childhood fears were a heady combination

Of an overactive imagination

And something called intrusive thoughts.

It was one of those balmy summer nights in the middle of college

I had spent most of the evening wasted out of my mind

Drunk off of summertime freedom, forbidden desires

And 151 rum, a liquor so strong

It was sold in a bottle with a metal grill on the top

To reduce the intense flammability

The golden nectar burning my throat with all the force of fire

As I took swigs, filtered straight through the metallic grill

I stood up shakily on the bed, bottle triumphantly in hand

And preached to the atheists

About my fear, about God

About how much the two were intertwined in my head

My neuroscientist friend looked me straight in the eye

And said I could believe whatever I needed to

And it was okay

I can never not believe in Him

I told her

No matter what the church has done, no matter what my college says

It's been ingrained into my brain in a way 

That I don't even think the neuroscientists could explain

I'm going on a trip someday

I said

Like Jack Kerouac maybe

All the way across America

Or maybe I'll go to London

And live there for a while;

Smoking cigarettes and drinking wine

In a dirty bathtub and writing novels when I've got the time

I don't know what will become of me

But somehow God is there

Maybe someday I will escape the fear
Maybe someday I will preach from a soap box
Or a homemade pulpit or a mountaintop
Maybe all I will tell people is that God is there
Maybe all I will teach them is to stop being afraid
But that my life is worth living because I have something to believe in
Who doesn't exist in the cushions of the pews
In the cranberry juice rings left in plastic communion cups
In the cracker crumbs left on silver engraved communion plates
Or in the preacher who stares down at all of us
Looks me straight in the heart and tells me why I'm going to hell.

No, God exists simply here. And here is anywhere you want it to be
But God, God does not exist in your stiff, your bleeding, your angry, your broken, your church-born

Fear

Relationship Series #1

We are a gulp of hot tea taken fully in the mouth
Before it had a chance to cool down
And swallowed, burning the throat all the way as it went.

Mechanics

There's going to be a lot more of those queerosexual couples
Sprouting up and around now that this support group has started
A woman with windblown hair, desperately in need of some make-up
Neck strangled with a scarf the color of honey mustard
Says in a loud voice

Okay no, she doesn't say queerosexual; to be fair
She's not that far back in the dark ages
But nevertheless he feels the hairs on the back of his
And the neck of every other gay girl and boy
Stand up and prickle

I don't know what they think they're going to accomplish
It's just wrong, doggoneit, wrong is what it is
Not natural, I mean
The parts just don't fit together

This last part spoken in hushed tones
Like the most scandalous of divulgences

But hearts- he wonders-
Do hearts have genders?

If my heart fits with your heart
Shouldn't we consider ourselves lucky that we've found
The puzzle piece

Not wasting our lives throwing out the match because some
Cantankerous old mechanic claims
The parts don't fit together.

Maybe someday she'll know what it's like
To feel a heart beat in synch next to hers
On a boat, in a lake, with the taste of rum on her lips
The sweetness of wine in her head
And she will forget about parts
Altogether 

Analysis of 2nd Task Poems

In my 2nd task of rewriting the paragraphs into poems with a more focused and shaped center, I basically read each paragraph and tried to find the points that stuck out the most to me as the point and the meaning. What I found in the first paragraph was that Peggy "Clevenger" was largely seen as an outsider in a very close-knit community of people, which I believe was why she was regarded as a witch, and, ironically, warded off with "The Pineys'" own superstitious methods. I tried to convey that sense of her being an outsider in the poem with a few different techniques. Mainly I emphasized the fact that she was different- starting off with the claim that she could transform into a rabbit and then talking about how she came from different areas than the rest of The Pineys, that she had a last name which was Hessian, and therefore was not really considered one of them. I also used some repetition in my poem to get this point across, repeatedly using the line "Replaced with the form of Peggy Cleaver." Changing the last name of Peggy was another technique I used. I had originally accidentally written Cleaver rather than Clevenger, but upon further consideration and discussion with the senior poet, decided to switch her last name to Cleaver because it indicated even further a sense of disconnect- "a cleaver" is something that chops things, separates things, cuts them apart, and that was my main goal in the poem, to show that Peggy was apart, that she very much other. In the format of the poem I tried to show this by always making the name "Peggy Cleaver" stand alone, on its own line, just like the character did.

In the second paragraph about the blueberry picking, the thing that struck me most was that Charlie's whole life was entirely consumed by farm labor; his whole family worked on that farm and that to me seemed to be everything they had. I sensed a kind of frustration within Charlie, and a tiredness. As someone who has picked blueberries before, I know the kind of exhausting and thankless labor it can be- and that's doing it for only an hour or so. As for Charlie, I sensed that he felt trapped in this cycle of generational labor, an unfair sort of labor that never gave back all that he gave into it, especially as he talked about the unjust treatment of the laborers by corporate supermarkets. At the same time, it is very hard and honest work; the fact than an elderly man would simply approach Charlie and give him a large sum of money's worth of tickets, rather than keep them for himself, is indicative of a very strong sense of honor among the laborers. Basically in the poem, I tried to depict Charlie's exhaustion, his feeling spent and tired and under-appreciated but then at the end being surprised by the unexpected justice that can come to one in this world. This is where I took some liberalities in the poem- I added extra descriptions of Charlie the way I pictured him in my head- as rather hardened and weathered from years of this thankless labor. In the format I attempted to emphasize the labor aspect of everything, how it was their entire life, how every member of his family had a part in it. How it made people almost inhuman- like cattle they herded around a pump just for some water. I think that the poem was written with longer lines punctuated in between with shorter, brisk sentences to underscore certain themes: such as the labor and the thrown togetherness of all the ages of people, and Charlie's final shock and surprise, the large sum of money.

Farm Labor [Assignment 2.B]

Thousands of blueberry bushes
Grew in the clearing
Marked only by a small, low, packing house
And a school bus, marked-
"Farm Labor Transport."
At the end of the working day pickers swarmed around a pump
Forming a jumbled line:
Old women, middle-aged men, even a young girl.
Charlie's whole family worked
As farm labor:
His sister, packing the boxes, his daughter-in-law
Covering them with cellophane and his son;
The supervisor.
Charlie often got angry
His weathered face worn and red
Worked up as he spoke of the injustice
The supermarket chains that stole from the pickers
Took straight from their  hands
Their hard-earned labor
But at the end of this particular day
As the pickers exchanged all their tickets for cash
Charlie was approached by an elderly man
Given a fistful of tickets
Which the man assumed had fallen from his son's pocket.
Charlie looked at me with shock in his hard brown eyes:
The tickets were worth seventy-five dollars.

The Appearances and Disappearances of Peggy Cleaver [Assignment 2.A]

It was known that Peggy Cleaver could turn herself
Into a rabbit;
Peggy Cleaver, the Witch of the Pines,
The Pine Barrens.
Those who lived there were known as the Pineys,
And put salt over their doors to discourage her visits.
Peggy Cleaver was not from The Pine Barrens
But lived in Pasadena:
A vanished town, an outsider.
An outsider with a Hessian last name.
Peggy Cleaver always appeared
When strange things occurred;
The time that the dog had chased a rabbit
Until it jumped into a house and disappeared
Replaced with the form of
Peggy Cleaver
Or the time that she smacked a man
For throwing a rock at a lizard
The lizard disappeared on the spot
Replaced with the form of
Peggy Cleaver.
Yet the Pineys still spoke of her stocking full of gold
And searched for it the morning they found her remains
In a burned down house,
Yet found,
As always
Nothing, for the gold- and Peggy
once again had
disappeared.

The Blueberry Pickers [Assignment 1.B]

We had come to a clearing
Where thousands of blueberry bushes grew.
In the center was the packing house
Small, low, with open and screenless windows
On all sides.
In front was a school bus
Marked "Farm Labor Transport"
The driver stood beside his bus:
A tall and amiable looking man
With bare feet.
He wore green trousers
And a T-shirt.
The end of the working day had come.
Pickers were swarming around a pump-
Old women, middle-aged men, a young girl.
A line was waiting
To use an outhouse near the pump.
Inside the packing house, berries-
Half an inch thick-
Were rolled up a portable conveyor belt, and,
Eventually,
Into pint boxes.
Charlie's sister was packing the boxes;
Charlie's daughter-in-law was putting cellophane over them
Charlie's son Jim was supervising the operation
Charlie
Picked up a pint box in which berries were mounded high
And told me with disgust
That some supermarket chains
Knock off these mounds
Of extra berries
And put them in new boxes,
Getting three or four extra pints per twelve-box tray.
At one window,
Pickers were turning in tickets of various colors
And were given cash in return.
On picker,
Who appeared to be
At least
In his sixties
Tapped Charlie on the arm and showed him
A thick packet of tickets
Held together with a rubber band.
"I found these,"
The man said.
"They must have fallen out of your son's pocket."
He gave the packet to Charlie,
Who thanked him
And counted the tickets.
Charlie said,
"These tickets are worth
seventy-five dollars."

The Witch of the Pines [Assignment 1.A]

The Pine Barrens-
Had, once, their own particular witch.
Pineys put salt
Over their doors
To discourage visits from the Witch of the Pines,
Peggy Clevenger.
It was known that she
Could turn herself into a rabbit,
For a dog was once sen chasing a rabbit
And the rabbit jumped through the window of a house,
And there
In the same instant
In the window
Stood Peggy Clevenger.
Another occasion
A man saw a lizard and tried
To kill it
By crushing it with a large rock.
When the rock hit the lizard it disappeared
And Peggy Clevenger materialized
On the spot
And smacked the man in the face.
Clevenger is a Hessian name- Peggy
Lived in Pasadena
Another of the now vanished towns, about
Five miles east of Mt. Misery.
It was said that she had a stocking
Full of gold
Her remains were found one morning
In the smoking ruins of her cabin,
But there was no trace of gold.

Haiku About The State That I Love

Oh Massachusetts
Please don’t release me yet: I
Want to stay, always.

From Fingernail Clippings to Funerals

I wish I could write poems about things that didn’t matter

You know how you feel like you can only write
In
These
Staccato
Lines
And everything will be meaningful?

Write a poem about a sunset
About the feeling you get when he touches you
Not just on your hand but inside your soul somehow
He grabs at the bloody flesh of the thing and tears something dark out
That’s what we want to read.
Write about fishing with your father as a little girl
Before distance and politics pushed you too far apart to
Remember what the safety of his hugs felt like anymore.

Write about the first time you heard someone sing live opera
And you realized people really do have voices that heartbreaking
And the beauty of the surprise made you feel funny, like you wanted to cry
Write about a man who preached words of purity to you
When you were fourteen and desperate for your first kiss
And five years later cheated on his wife and babies
Write about the time your grandfather died and
Your sister called you at a friend’s house to let you know
In such a brusque, insensitive, brutal way
And you don’t think you can ever really forgive her for that
Write about these DEEP. AND BIG. AND IMPORTANT. things.

What if I just want to write about how beautiful this song is
How when I pause my iTunes I can hear voices
The sound of two lovers fighting
Which seems like such a silly, contrary thing
But then again, I have never really had a lover
So how would I know?

Write about how
I wouldn’t mind a lover
If I was going to tell you the truth
I would love a lover.
I would be good to a lover.
I can’t help but think I’d like to have that someday. 

Shit.
It got deep
And all I meant to type about was
Awkward skype fights
And fingernail clippings falling on the floor
One
By
One. 

Leukemia

The disease was in your blood

Running through your veins
Mixed in- a part of the very thing that was keeping you alive.
How do you get rid of something like that?
They couldn’t freeze your body momentarily in time and
Drain your veins of the poison-
And along with it, your life
And then
As soon as your body was cold and white, emptied
Pump you back up again
Inflate your capillaries, slowly, like the blowing up of a balloon
Set your heart to work again
Pumping blood that was clean and healthy and good for you.
No, medicine isn’t magic. And cancer doesn’t work that way. 

Even if they did that,
just like even if you went into remission
The cancer was in your bones
Literally; You were full of it. 
You were probably
Going to die. 
You told me the story once
How you did die, actually, just for a few seconds
Once, it was a scare.
Then twice and when it looked too grim for even
The hopefullness of a mother to overlook,
They started to plan:
The graveyard was next to the church
The tombstone was white marble, but small, unassuming
The years would read 1992 to 1998
And your coffin was forty-six inches long.

When I met you, you were nineteen
And it hurt my heart that I couldn’t go back
I would’ve hugged the six-year-old you
And cried a stream of mingled saltwater and snot into your blonde scruffy hair
You would’ve held me, stalwart, braver than me
Even as a little boy

I can see myself now, the rashness of my behavior-
I would’ve cut open my arm with a kitchen knife;
I would have sliced open my veins and pressed them to yours
Futilely, foolishly
Thinking somehow I could save you
In some ill-performed Indian blood-brother ritual
You would’ve pushed me, bloodied and crazed, off of you
And wiped away my tears on the hem of your hospital gown.
I can imagine the six-year-old you
So practical, wise, numb to the silly emotions of the
Adults around you that you couldn’t quite understand.
You just wanted to go to Disney.

We talked about this in a coffee shop
Maybe a year or so ago, now
Because you’re not dead, nor are in you remission.
You’re just done; the cancer is gone.
They put your brother’s bone marrow in you because they know how to do that these days
His blood flows through your veins
And though we laugh about it now, how you could commit a crime and get away with it
Because you share your brother’s exact DNA
The truth is that it’s for that alone you’re still alive
For that alone you could talk to me in a coffee shop at all
Or even grow old enough to learn the taste of coffee.
And so we laugh because it’s wonderful; we laugh because we’re terrified. 

And yes your growth was stunted
And yes your father beat you
And the hospital still holds you hostage sometimes
You can’t breathe so well, or do much physical activity
You know every kind of pain medication
Better then you know the periodic table
Which is so frustrating, so infuriating to this
Nineteen-year-old me
Because you were going to be a doctor
Pediatric oncology
To save the other little boys like you
So capable- you, so smart
Clearly meant to be on this earth and do something the rest of us can’t do
I would carry on for you
But I am sick myself, in a different way
And even if I was strong enough, I’d never be smart enough
I’m the girl that tried to give you my blood, remember?
Probably traumatized you for life as I pressed my
Bleeding arms to your tiny, tube-tied body

Why aren’t you here?
Do you ask yourself that?
Why are you alone, not by choice, but by force?
Why did God save you, again and again
To then lock you in this prison
Of…domesticity
You are a twenty-year-old future pediatric oncologist
Stuck in an eighteen year-old boy’s body
Trapped in the life of a fifties housewife

If I were you, I’d scream.
I’d get drunk off of vodka and throw up in a trash can
I’d chain smoke off the back deck and yell at my mother
I’d listen to trashy music and watch internet porn
I’d cut up my arms, not to save anybody, just to harm myself
And when all of that proved futile
I’d lie in my bed listening to the argument in my head
Between the former me and the current me and God
And all the while contemplate suicide.

But. That’s just me. I am not like you. Clearly.
You are- different. Special.
How many times have they told you that? How many times have you wanted to
Smash dishes, break bones
Because those fucking words are meaningless
When you’re stuck here in this home

And do you ever cry?
Or was I the only one…
To see you break down in tears
On the edge of a winter-thawing swamp
On the seat of a frozen cornfield
You cried
I would’ve saved you, six-year-old you
With my blood and my tears
I would’ve saved you
Eleven-year-old you
By taking you away from you father
I would’ve saved you
Twenty-year-old you
From the fury and despair of your curtain-lined jail
How is it I would not save you
Nineteen-year-old you
When you told me I was breaking your heart?