Grab Bag

Here are a couple of poems I don't have a whole lot to say about (partly because it's too hot to think), but I like them and felt like they deserved a promotion from the hard drive. I will say that the second one is another from the series of home poems and was mostly composed there - edited this afternoon. I hope you enjoy them.


1. Miss Goody-Two Shoes

The shower’s too hot,
but you don’t reach for the cold.
Are you ignoring that tap with rebellious desire,
or as premonitory self-punishment?

Inner and outer voices clash beneath the suds -
blood pressure rises with the steam;

“Take the easy option,
look right in front of you.
It’s a sure thing -
it’s what the good girls do.”

Follow their advice, do what you’re told;

“Send this text, but not that one,
just see what might happen.
Leave that other Facebook option alone;
‘friend’ doesn’t mean what it used to.”

But that tattle-tale feeling in your gut?
Connected to that lineal story of misaligned stars
predating and predicting your very existence?
“Wait until the time is right…”

Wash confusion down the drain
with orchid extract and apricot bits,
but it clogs and swirls at your feet,
casting a scalding, dizzying spell.

Cut off the flow before heat fades,
revel in the heaviness of saturated air,
the anticipation of the moment
when crimson skin will recoil in shock and anger
from the frigid blast beyond the safety of the door.

May 20, 2010



2. Storm Chasing

564 miles doesn’t make any difference sometimes.
Tornado Katie, Tornado Jay – they’re all the same,
brandishing flashy graphics and HD radars
as weapons in the war on weather,
as if blotches of green and red
could be more highly defined than a bolt of lightning.
Dog breathes faster, trees sway amongst the flashes;
shut the windows, batten down the hatches.
One sibling flutters in panic, the other chuckles wisely until
SkyCam proves too tempting – both run outside to look.

June 17, 2010

On the question of home

I hate change. Ask anyone who’s known me for any length of time and they’ll say “Amanda watches too much TV and cannot cook to save her life, but those things are okay because she’s generally pretty awesome. Oh, and she hates change more than Fred Phelps hates the world.” Or at least that’s what I’d like to think they’d say.

I know why I watch too much TV, and I know why I'm a terrible cook, but I genuinely don’t know where this bit of neurosis regarding departure from the status quo comes from; I wasn’t violently ripped away from family or home at a young age... nothing traumatic happened at all, really. But I have always stubbornly hated changes big and small, sometimes with better results than others.

I mention this because my recent visit to the Great White North - only my second since truly moving out on my own - simply overwhelmed me with the sheer volume of changes occurring in this place that had unquestionably been my home for so many years. More than the obvious transformation of my sister's graduation (the reason for the trip in the first place), it was the little things that threw me off balance. The first morning, I woke up on an air mattress on the living room floor; the only guest invited to this particular slumber party. My bed is in Lawrence now, of course, and my room has been converted to desperately-needed sewing space, not a guest room. All very logical, but still disconcerting. That afternoon, I went to run errands for my mother, and while I knew exactly which streets to take and exactly when the lights would change, and my license plates blended in with the masses for the first time in months, something felt off. I caught myself looking on the streets and in the stores for faces I couldn’t possibly find – they were over 500 miles away. Some of those that did appear were hauntingly familiar but void of any context or too far removed by time, so we passed one another in silence.

As the week went by, things only got weirder as my family went about their business (jobs, friends, rehearsals, etc.) and I realized that I had nothing to do. I spent afternoons in my pjs taking advantage of a television signal that isn't dependent on tin foil and wind, which was a nice way to recover from the stress of the semester, but after a few staring contests with the dog (she always wins), I grew restless. And so, the intense labor of this poem and sorting out the feelings behind it began. I'm still not sure it does itself any justice, but believe it or not, I'm ready for a change.




Between 1st and 3rd

Fill up the car and hit the road,
no hastily scrawled dashboard directions necessary;
left where the deer (no antelope) play,
left again at the top of the hill, and you’re there:
home.

If only it were still that simple.

Heart pulls southward,
against the cruise control
for the first time -
unclear toward what or whom,
but for ten hours, the sensation is tangible;
landmarks and reminders appear in the rearview.

Arrival never tastes the way it should –
like frosting on a store-bought cake.
Sometimes bitterly sweet,
but more often, full of air.

Within brick walls lies a paradox
of simultaneous same and different.
Everything smells right:
lilacs mix with earthy dust,
but tear-filled eyes are left disappointed.

What was solid rock is now wobbly;
a foundation crumbles,
an aging dog stumbles,
and amidst the emptiness, realization dawns:
memories at these coordinates have transformed
into a fantasy waiting to be found.

June 14, 2010

This needs help!

I have hit a wall on this poem, but it deserves to be finished and re-posted with a proper write-up because there are things in it that I absolutely LOVE. So, I am turning it over to more capable (or at least more objective and less distracted) hands. My biggest issue is the ending - I can't decide if it just needs a better last line (this one is terrible) or if it should keep going; perhaps a third movement about the trip back to KS? I don't know. Thoughts? Push me. I need it.


(It also needs a title)

Fill up the car and hit the road,
no hastily scrawled dashboard directions necessary;
left where the deer (no antelope) play,
left again at the top of the hill, and you’re there:
home.

If only it were still that simple.

Heart pulls southward,
against the cruise control
for the first time -
unclear toward what or whom,
but for ten hours, the sensation is tangible;
landmarks and reminders appear in the rearview.

Arrival never tastes the way you’d expect –
like frosting on a store-bought cake.
Sometimes bitterly sweet,
but more often, full of air.

Within the brick walls lies a paradox
of simultaneous same and different.
Everything smells right, but looks a little off.
What was solid rock is now wobbly;
A foundation crumbles,
an aging dog stumbles,
and you realize:
perhaps home has become a figurative place
waiting to be re-created.

A Stalling Tactic

I don't have anything new finished yet, but I'm feeling the need to post something on this lazy Sunday afternoon. So, here's a piece I wrote at the end of January - one of you in particular will recognize it from a time that already seems to be lifetimes ago. I'm not completely satisfied with it (the ending especially bothers me... I guess that's because there isn't an end yet!), but it may also end up being necessary as a reference for one of the poems I'm working on/avoiding - we'll see if that pans out soon. (Keep bothering me about it/them!) Also worth noting: it was done as an imitation exercise (see A.R. Ammons' piece, "Autobiographical Note," which I tried to find online but failed) - hence, the extremely choppy tone. Although it actually suits my voice just fine, it would feel a bit different if the idea had been mine originally.

(I'm blanking out some of the more specific identifying details since this is going out on the wild, wild interwebz, but I didn't want to eliminate them entirely and ruin the rhythm of the piece.)



Autobiographical Note

I was born in the sweltering Kansas heat of August --, 19--. I was a heavyweight champion among newborns. A week late in coming, I had tested my mother’s strength as the visiting relatives-in-law tested her patience. Shortly thereafter, her own sister videotaped me for hours as I slept; I can’t recall if my patience was tested. Nearly five years and a pioneer’s journey to the Great White North later, my sister Emily was born in August of 19--. For weeks, I had been telling people around town that I was to have a little sister and her name would be Emily. None of this had been confirmed or decided. What if I’d insisted she would be an extraterrestrial named Walter? I tolerated eight years of the realtor’s fake smiling and my mother’s hem-hawing and my father’s eyes rolling as we looked for a house. Just after we found 2-- S. C------- St, a tornado came within a mile of knocking it down as I cowered in the apartment’s bathtub, praying to never see the realtor again. That fall, my father walked me from the new house to fourth grade with Emily in tow each day – they walked on to the donut shop unbeknownst to me or my mother. A few years later, the school was knocked down and replaced by an Arby’s restaurant. I refuse to eat at any Arby’s to this day, despite my love of curly fries, because I loved my school more. When my best friend and I “graduated” from junior high in 2001, I told him that in four years, I would give our high school valedictorian speech and he would be salutatorian. He held up his end of the bargain. In August of 2005, I returned to the sweltering Kansas heat, this time in pursuit of higher knowledge and most importantly, a teaching license.

(Grr... such a cop-out ending, but I don't have the energy to fix it. It's too hot. Time for some iced tea.)