Week 14 Draft

This is my workshop piece. I took a lot of the comments into consideration. Thanks! 

Draft 2: (10/25/2010)

In a Vegas Denney’s Thinking About My Lost Child, 1985

Looking out the window fogged with

scorched hash browns and hard coffee

the waitress aborts the flashing cowboy hats,

panty hosed sluts, and snapping impersonators

to the sands.

Here, in Denney’s, her chipped nails hold the past’s glasses

once filled with single malts and plastic ice until 5AM,

hands tinkering the ice, playing roulette and shooting craps,

and she hears the ancient roots of the desert call for another round-on

the house. 

 

Draft 3 (11/13/2010)

Inside the Denney's she looks out the window fogged with

scorched hash browns and hard coffee.

Thinking of floor 37, Room 2 when she

put bubbles in the champagne glass hot tub,

she lays a bent fork next to smudged spoons.

Taking out the soured towel, she wipes

that away, leaving the faint smell of bleach

and breast milk.

Out there the Vegas palms abort the flashing cowboy hats

where panty hosed whores strut.

The greats shoot craps and

drink single malts with plastic ice till 5AM.

The blades of newness slap

the salty, sweet, hard felt.

Clapping hands curl to embrace the feeling

of loss that surrounds the pyramids and

we all count plastic hardships in unison.

Water in the desert jolts to life tipsy roots

calling for another round-on the house.

Back inside, the waitress leaves

the check-all wrong and honest- getting

change for all she’s worth out here.

Week 12, How to Pick Bean Trees

Draft 2: (10/25/2010)

Gather up boat tires, flattened license plates, and excised Irish Catholics before heading

to the muddy ditches of creek bottoms.

Wash the burnt religion and the tacky smell of rotting bean flesh from the leathered skin

with dirt sneaking under square nail beds.

Split wood shells and mossy pods, dank with the backwoods of McGaha cove, before easing

in the masked stillborn cemetery.

Read the sacred heart notes and call before coming because the coffee might be

stale and the cards might still be on the table from the last wake.

Handle the snake, though the reading glass smudges with cyanide, before going out through the

deadheaded mums, the intoxicated hay and sterilized corn husks.  

Then, climb up, seeing the heavenly shoots, fall down into what you know too well to pick.

Week 11, Lady Aberline Likes Jazz Draft 1

Lady Aberline likes Jazz

You're not putting your hand up my dress.
Yes, I will build schools, figure puzzles and talk to animals-
but I am not open for your imagination.

Kin to puppets with weekday names, I shimmy
through life with a boring bun and blue jean jumper.
I crush the track with my bowed Sam and Libby's,
I can't work in the factory or
preside over the museum with ruddy cheeks--
but Handy Man Negri and I have our fun
in jazz clubs far from Make Believe Land.

The smoke thick rooms fill my hair as Negril
wails on the lost dings of the trolley that
makes it all real. Thinking on the delivery of
the day-the only human contact through the wall
and the change of the sweater vest leaves me trapped
unable to taste the flakes of real life slipping away.
I'm known for this because it is my name.

*This came from the exercise of writing from another character's voice. Lady Aberline is the woman in Mister Roger's Neighborhood. After doing some research about her and Handy Man Negril, I found out that both were someone famous on the jazz scene as well. There may be too many allusions here, but I like speaking from her voice. 

Week 10, Nero's Prosciutto Draft 2

Draft 2 from an Anaphora Exercise

Nero's Prosciutto

Here, where the frogs moan their tombstone solos and the rushes yawn,
I think of Venice and laundry, hanging like Nero's prosciutto.
The hemoglobin hues of summer dresses and last night's underwear
entwine. The pastels of past years and the staggering heat of canals
age the wind of middle school days.

There in the musty canals, I butcher the dog's hair like standing rib roast, little bones
wearing santa hats and leafy crowns in tandem.

Week 9, Improv

From "The Carcass" by Baudelaire
And the sky was watching that superb cadaver
Blossom like a flower.
So frightful was the stench that you believed
You'd faint away upon the grass.

There behind the rusty tire well of F150's
the glass eyed, rust colored raccoon quivers
behind the birdcage of desire and hears the
tick of drums and the useless trills of runner's heels
cutting through the dense woods of libraries and
the health department.

Week 9, Free Write

Translation  of Baudelaire's "The Carcass" 
My Words in Bold
Une Charogne
The Charger

Rappelez-vous l'objet que nous vîmes, mon âme,


Rapunzel mouses the object of venom, man and me.
Ce beau matin d'été si doux:
The blue martian eats suduko
Au détour d'un sentier une charogne infâme
And detours under the sentiment of the flaming cologne.
Sur un lit semé de cailloux,
Surrender the lite semen and Clorox.
Les jambes en l'air, comme une femme lubrique,'
The jambs in the air come and lubricate the feminine
Brûlante et suant les poisons,
The Brilliant sauna of poisons
Ouvrait d'une façon nonchalante et cynique
Nonchalant ovaries critique the falcons
Son ventre plein d'exhalaisons.
and venture the plain explosions.

Le soleil rayonnait sur cette pourriture,
Of solitude and rayon with cigarette points in the furniture.
Comme afin de la cuire à point,
Come to defend and cure the point of breaking
Et de rendre au centuple à la grande Nature
and the complete rendering of gratin.
Tout ce qu'ensemble elle avait joint;
Touching and reassembling the awaiting joint. 

Week 9, Pedagogy

This week, I am working to convince my students that poetry is a useful form of writing. Working with my student teacher, we developed lessons where we are reading poems in class required by the GPS, then we are having the students select lines to use as a starter. Although I had some rather good images "The city smells like crumbling buildings"-student and "the post it notes of life stare back through the cave"-student, for the most part, students were confused. I wonder if I went wrong somewhere. Perhaps we didn't work to establish a basis for this work, and so the students are confused about their purpose and their goal. The performance standards focus strongly on literature content, but when it comes to writing, they are more vague. I wonder, should I have done other exercises to set this up before actually having students write?