My Friend the Bartender

Two Surrealist Shorts. Hooray!

A few weeks ago, my friends and I (MFA program poets - current and alums)took off to the Marin headlands to shoot a film for our "Poetry International" class on surrealism. The directors (Kate and Libby) just posted them on YouTube!

They did a crazy good job on the editing. Although I wish they would have cut the part where I was too short for Kelci's bike... :)

Awkward Door - Get to the end, with the red string. This part is so rad. Starts at 5:08. (Libby took these shots on her bike. And our professor's in it. I'm on the end with the grey skirt.)

Awkward Door

Exquisite Confessional - Kate asked us all the same series of rapid fire questions. Here are our answers, in a random order (pulled out of a hat.) Highlights: Jay sings "Purple Rain."

Exquisite Confessional

Last Workshop Submission of the Semester: Chance

This project was intensely challenging for me. Brian (professor) assigned us each a word and gave us seven post-cards. Every two weeks, I sent my classmate Libby a poem about my word. No record could be kept of what was written previously. At the end of the term, all postcards were returned for with which to create one serial poem.

CHANCE

Everywhere my foot falls
there's that great
Trojan horse of your eyes -
waiting
explosive
shhhh....

Delicious minefield! Let's pay
no mind to Maybe or her sisters.

*****

When you realize
it's a riptide, don't
swim for shore.

My ragged breath
and a persistent purpled
suction. Intoxicating
tug into your hush.

*****

implicit risk of a cap-gun

implicit risk of an uncapped pen

all those hints at bad
the new definition of our days

*****

I am told that
you have come
to think of yourself
as an old scrim,

the passage of light
through your fibers at once
a celebration of "perhaps."

I weight the rope and wait.

*****


The understood spark
between a Fate’s snapped
fingers: ignition
of prodigal blood
in my recognized face.

*****

That I will remember
that day today is unlikely:

Embarrassment can be so
impersonal, an old coin
with the same face on either side.

*****

Warmed season of plush
parameters -

Their destruction
less
important than the thought

they might have lived.

On Rhyming "Tower" with "Tower" (The Avant-Garde)

I just wrote a poetics statement in which I mentioned the thirteen month curve, after which point I hate everything I've written. Makes it difficult to feel good about publishing.

My good-timing champion (read: Mom/Alice Ann/totally rad)found this and sent me the PDF. "You've been writing poetry for a long time."

Teaser of My Lifetime: Reversed syntax, quatrains, pentameter.... and a "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" reference. (Typed version not as [sic] as it should be, but give me a break.)

____________

I wish I was a medieval child
Who was a princess kind, not wild.
My parents were the king and queen
And I’d be praised for everything.

But I wouldn’t gloat, or act so great
Because someone awful would seal my fate.
I hope I meet a jolly good knight,
Who saves me when I’m frozen in fright.

If a dragon tries to scare me bad,
My protecting knight would get SO MAD!
He’d slay that dragon, just for me,
And I’d curtsy and say, “Why, I thank thee!”

I’d live in the castle of Camelot,
And fear me, of course, the kingdom would not.
Merlin and I would brew many a potion
And test it out we would do with caution.

King Arthur, my father, would hold me on his lap
And say, “My little daughter, take a short nap!
And when you’re through,
I’ll be waiting here for you
To tell you the story of my medieval life
Up to the time when I saw Guinevere, my wife!”

Then I would sleep, and when I awoke –
There would be Arthur! (It hadn’t been a joke!)
We would sit and talk for an hour.
Then I’d walk to the highest tower
And look at the kingdom that would someday be mine…

I’d stand there and look out of the tower –
To think, that someday I’d have all that power!

To rule a kingdom, gay and great,
To everything set a date,
Like when the beheading of thieves will be,
And when the whole kingdom will come dine with me.

Ah, but that is in many a year,
But on that great day, I’ll be filled with cheer.
But alas, I’m just a kid from the 90’s
But maybe a time warp will occur… to medieval times.