I have written an entire manuscript of interactions with Nicole Terez-Dutton's If One Of Us Should Fall. We even did a show together where we went back and forth between her poems and my interactions. This new poem is a combination of themes she explores in the book: the constant motion/traveling of the book's narrative, and the book's rhapsodizing of potential in the "Almost" poems. A Catalog Of Places We've Almost Been
Adam Stone California was an accident of possibility and sunlight Neither of us wanted temperance We considered kansas The flatness of your mother's eyes when the tow truck driver gifted me your last name Her voice dipped lake champlain I want to talk about your eyes No map Traveling by instinct Vast and only partially chartable But we don't talk anatomy We discuss only the immediate future New orleans The dakotas We don't talk about the place we agreed not to talk about anymore Happy Content Honest Our bloodstreams intersection clogged with montana until even mosquitoes couldn't taste the difference between us
0 Comments
April Penn is the first...multiple interactor to meet....all their deadlines...mainly because...April is awesome...here she uses haiku to tackle...Nikki Giovanni's ellipses addiction. Reader Response Haiku
(Responding to Those Who Ride the Night Winds by Nikki Giovanni) April Penn … Why the ellipses? Are they the uncharted path of riding night winds? Ellipses, leaving room for air and for lost words needing new worlds. Why the ellipses? To move close to the body, to refrain losses? … To select the scraps, the poet muses with time, quilting lived garments. … You do not love wrong or by mistake, always love, find heroes in self. … Colored people couldn’t vote… couldn’t use the bathroom in public places… couldn’t go to the same library they paid taxes for… had to sit on the back of the buses… couldn’t live places… work places… go to movies… amusement parks… Nothing if you were colored … Just signs … always signs … saying No … No … No… (From “Harvest (for Rosa Parks)”) The sign that says no Everywhere no no no no-- racist exclusion. … Love should change your life. Move you beyond the boundary of your stubborn self. Giovanni says, Love Thoughts like a song, a drum, a music in you. … A good writing prompt: Begin with, “You were gone like…” then fail to compare. Champion of the joy that cries out lonely, someone to sing for, to love. Ariel Baker-Gibbs ruminates on moving, maps, and mountains after reading Sherman Alexie's What I've Stole, What I've Earned, which she has rated "top notch". Interaction With Sherman Alexie's What I've Stolen, What I've Earned
Ariel Baker-Gibbs i like packing more than unpacking. i like packing away things in boxes because everything fits together and i can look at all of it at once, even when it doesn’t make sense, like why would the head scratcher nestle so perfectly on top of a scarf that’s next to a bag of q-tips that are on top of books on top of a map. the map which was given to me by my mother’s childhood friend, whose husband died of a heart attack two days ago on the island. and the map is of the island. as a child i had gone on his fishing boat across the lines that i can see on the map, of depth and of height. the island is a mountain in the water, and the island is still a mountain. and we can see the lines as they appear on the cliffs and mountains of the island. we can see how real they are, how true. the island is still unresolved treaty land. this is also on a map. up here, the fishing town where i was born, bearing the name of the K’ómoks band, holding the round letters of Comox. the round circles of topography, the vertical conclusion of a mountain into thin air. this is how we do and how we claim. we say nobody knows who it belongs to, we just know who went there before and we know who goes there now. we draw it up, we write it down. we prevaricate. it feels like it belongs to us. it belongs by not belonging. it does not belong to us but we paid money for it. what it is worth to be in a place. to be soothed by its beauty, that soothed so many. to be not from it, but to come to it, even from birth. to love it uneasily and helplessly. we eat fish from the strait and potatoes from the garden and everything tastes like earth’s butter. we sit there and look at the same silhouette of the mountains behind the mountains as has been there for years and years and they remain etched on our retinas long after it becomes dark. that line stays. In Sherman Alexie's What I've Stolen, What I've Earned he toys with an unusual form of sonnet. There is no rhyme scheme. There is only a loose concept of couplets. It's one justified blob of fourteen numbered ideas. I've tried to be strict with my own ideas of coupleting and making the foot adhere to my idea of what a sonnet foot should be. I'm still not in love with giant justified blob with numbers in it, and I might reformat it later, but here it adheres to Alexie's visual formatting. Sonnet With Forgotten Phone Numbers
Adam Stone 1. She says she says she says that she is losing what she says her memory was because of her damned she says cell phone. 2. It used to be I needed to remember all of these numbers. Everyone close and familiar was a seven digit she says nickname. If they moved away they became ten she says and easier to forget. Now everyone is a picture if I remember to take it, she says a ringtone if I remember how those work she says but most often I don't answer my phone anymore because I don't know she says who anyone is. 3. She says a lot of stupid shit. 4. But maybe she's right this time. 5. She says also that she misses landlines and rotaries both on the phone and the road. There's something so satisfying she says about circles How you never know when you're finished with something or when something is beginning. 6. She says she misses typewriters even though all the letters are on the keyboard of a computer that can remember things that even 1980s typewriters couldn't hold in their memory. 7.That's just it she says I don't want to trust some machine to remember how I felt while I was typing a letter. I want to see the paper. She says. I want to see where I dented the paper. She says I want to see the stories scars as they happen. She says I don't want to watch it happen on some screen and wait for it to print out later. 8. I say You would have made a lousy x-ray technician. 9. She says something she says I can't hear because she says newfangled phones are always breaking up. 10. She says this over a 1992 barely cordless phone where all the numbers have been fingered away. 11. She doesn't say fingered of course that's my word. She doesn't acknowledge the physically missing numbers on her phone. It's the numbers in her memories she's concerned with. 12. She says click click she says static she says something I can't hear because she's moved too far away from the base. 13. The call cuts out which she will surely blame my cellphone for though I will be using it to check my bank account while she will be slamming her phone with her fist and pressing the useless buttons on the base. 14. She will try and remember where she put the notebook with my phone number in it because she can't remember which button on her phone used to say Redial. Juan Felipe Herrera's collection Giraffe On Fire is dense and awesome. It's political and inescapable. It's tight image and unattributed dialogue. I'm going to have to read this book three or four times to properly tell you why it's about. What you should read it to. But read it. The book is divided into five parts. Each with their own style of formatting. The first part starts off with stage directions setting you up for a play. Which had me thinking of when I used to work in the theater. The summer that everything fell apart and the winter where I tried to put it back together but only succeeded in dispersing what had fallen. I have enough poems about the dead boyfriend, not as many about the aftermath without him. Honey Is Sweeter Than Blood Adam Stone I. The stairs don't skin They deskin Your skin on some stair But inertia The bottom is coming Laugh at the innuendo Ouch The lobby is barren Drops of your blood Keep running The green room The mirror Your face is no worse than before the stairs Another staircase Up this time Up No more falling The music is vamp You enter They do not ask about the blood The blood makes sense The audience You sing You die on stage It's scripted They pack you in the empty Coke machine Roll back out Descend the stairs Safely Slowly Off comes the jacket The chain catches on Ow Your knees a planetarium Another actor comes downstairs Lost in the planetarium Fetch the solarcaine The rest of the show you're someone else Scheduled for wheelchair Blanket over your fishnetted lap and legs One more up the stairs One more down Paced You hit your marks You hit your notes Your planetarium is stunning in hot pink fishnets The lobby The crowd The cute guy from the audience You chose him You mocked him You touched his ears His mother -oh god- his mother? His mother takes a picture of you Him glasses Him black pants Him pressed shirt Him teeth so can opener You hot pink fishnets No wheelchair Teeth still remember the shape of braces Expensive teeth Retainer lost They are starting to drift to unique Him college -whew- You college Same college One month You maybe Him see ya You undressing room Mirror too much lipstick Hair looks like gravity suspended Maybe him see ya II. You are not an immediate pedestal. Though he steps on you. Didn't tell anyone how you touched him when you met. How you misread your course schedule and walked into him playing hacky-sack. The 90s hit you on your chest and you let it roll down and rest on your shoe. There are so many feet between you. Your heart a jam band. You'll stop listening to it in a few years. III. You meet someone else He smells like a jam band but looks like Maybe. You do not touch him anywhere. You invite him to your birthday. your 21st birthday It's karaoke night at your usual bar where no one is allowed to tell the bartender you're just turning twenty-one Lightning Literal lightning The kitchen is The Library of Alexandria There is a hard rain falling from every sprinkler in the ceiling Karaoke is finally ruined by something other than bros Your acting professor offers his favorite bar You follow because his directions make no sense A bar across from the lot where you bought your current car The only building there has blacked out wind--- oh IV. Piano The instrument The noise level Your classmates Dancing The only dancing The only under forty You dancing You've got great rhythm Pity you don't know what to do with it Your professor Your glancing at Maybe Your dancing Who would you bring to Plato's retreat Reference to a scene I'm working on Beyond Therapy Christopher Durang He saw you glancing at Maybe Five drinks Maybe more than glancing Shrug Walk to bar Sixth drink Fifty year old somebody stranger Shot Tequila Done Don't see Maybe Drink seven Dance to classmates They are kool-aid in tap water This whole bar is us colored But you can't see anyone you recognize Dance Somebody twirls you Maybe the front door Maybe exit Line dancing now Achy Breaky Heart Right Vine Brush Forward Heel Touch Forward Heel Touch Back Toe Touch Back Toe Touch Left Vine Quarter Turn Left V.
You and Hacky Sack start a poetry journal. You and Maybe work at a renaissance faire. Your house has two beds. One for you. One for the men you're afraid to sleep with. On your twenty-second birthday you've still told neither of them a thing about your heart. They don't know your first real boyfriend died a month before you met them. They don't know that on the nights they don't sleep over you go online and fail to love anyone. You have failed so many people who came back. You invite them both over for drinks and discover they went to high school together. Maybe thinks Hacky Sack is great. Hacky Sack tells you Maybe bullied him in high school. At least you think if they're both gay or bi or whatever anyone is they are unlikely to fuck each other and not you. You selfish. You stupid. Them straight. ish. But straight to you. Maybe knows before you come out to him. Tries to fix you up with irritating gay friend. Apologizes for assuming all gay people would like all other gay people even though you haven't explicitly used the word gay just said that you loved him. He knew. You spend a month with Hacky Sack at a new college. He hasn't left you. He has moved. He sort of took you with him. Four hour trips twice a month. Peacocks in the schoolyard. Bad poetry. Terrible poetry. A girl in his class whose meter is so off you know Hacky Sack must love her. He loves her. She hates you. He loves you. But not like that. She hates you. Like that. She knows. He doesn't. She calls you faggot. Nobody calls you that. You don't even know how to react. They fight. You sleep in your car. He knocks on your window. You sleep in his room. She sleeps in her room. Nobody touches anyone. They break up. She pregnant. They back together. They fuck. They fuck. They fuck. She confesses never pregnant. They fight. They break up. She pregnant. You call her liar. You misogynist. You never liked her. You sabotage. But no she not pregnant this time either. You drive home. He calls you. He drives to your home. You get high. You watch The Wizard Of Oz while listening to Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon. You cliche. Him cliche. You put your arm around him. He leans in to your arms. You happy. Him drive back to school. Him e-mail. Doesn't call you faggot. Implies it. Never speaks to you again. Maybe calls. Drives to your home. Puts arms around you. Not into you. Friend. Offers to start bullying Hacky Sack for real. You laugh. At him. At self. At laughter. Here's my third shot at the second interaction with Anne Carson's Autobiography Of Red. I wanted to steer it well wide of the last one, even though I really liked it. So this is more like some of the early poems in the collection. II. The Journalist Resigns
Adam Stone None of our photographs show us the way we wish to be resolved ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The man who lives in Adam's old neighborhood wants Adam inside him His first text We just don't have men like you here So sexy What will you do with me All this a response to motel bathroom selfie Recognition of song lyric in his profile Adam agrees to meet him at the motel It is early still He texts There is no room four here The guy at the desk says rooms start with one hundred Hotel instead of motel He is bad with directions and names Calls Adam andrew when explaining he forgot condoms and neither of them looks like the photographs they both just took an hour ago I am wearing every inch of road in this stupid town and need a shower He closes the bathroom door for two minutes Adam arranges the bed the suitcase his hat Checks his phone for advice from his future self Parker he wants to be called says I have this friend You'd like him He wants to watch you fuck me There is not enough room Adam thinks what with our bodies and the voyeur version of me who will be writing down the inevitable mistake of our bodies I'm not in to that Adam says while parker shrugs off his towel There is not enough shower for both of them The bed is a different mistake Knees bumping elbows Apologetic headbutts Parker sits on adam's chest and (in the corner of the room adam is taking notes How they refuse to face each other How they know they are assembling a model with half the pieces missing and no glue) nothing looks like it should from this angle Adam pushes (in autobiography of red by anne carson Greydon the dragon boy has a journal he records his intimate thoughts in Adam has a journal too but he worried he was treating everyone like a story where he was shining protagonist Knowing himself fork with missing tines Sneakers scuffed by arrogant time He shouldn't write this Parker didn't consent to be known as from adam's old neighborhood A litany of misgivings Having his knees focused on instead of the ass so amply positioned Parker asked for none of this misalignment) The are both finished and dressed before the possibility of conversation Adam doesn't mention the angry text from a woman he barely knows How he kept thinking you always pull people into your drama was coming from a woman intending to pull him into her drama Her drama being currently the desire to be right in a conversation five years forgotten Parker doesn't admit he ran into three friends on his way over and couldn't come up with a convincing reason for walking through the tourist end of town How he suspected they knew this would not be his first time in a motel room with the wrong man Each of them just wanting this want to be overwith James Gendron's Sexual Boat (Sex Boats) is one of my favorite random purchases. I was at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs conference when I ran into Anis Mojgani, and asked him to recommend some small presses. He pointed me in the direction of Octopus Books, and I think I ended up dropping about $100 and loving most of the books I picked up from them. Sexual Boat (Sex Boats), in particular was a joy. I picked it for the unusual name, and that it appeared to be filled with several one page poems with unusual grammar. I loved it more than I understood it. So, in many ways, it was like the book and I had dated for several years. The title of this blog post is from an interview with James Gendron where he talks about his writing process and comes off more quirky than pompous, which is pretty rare in poets. The title of the poem is just a rewriting of the title of several of his poems (and his book). I tried to write it in an echo of his voice, as opposed to copying his voice. Then I had the word "echo" in my head, and I had to use it in the first line. Intimate Dinghy (Affable Gondola)
Adam Stone A stranger's name is a cave without echo that I have grown too fat to fit into When someone is familiar but in the wrong venue for me to recognize them I try to climb head first into their name but always get caught at the shoulders Hello and head nod is my nickname for my impending what's it called not amnesia when you have too many memories that you can't see the ocean for the salt oh yes Alzheimer's In middle school I outremembered all my friends and relatives perhaps because there were so few of them My imagination was feral but my memory was a squirrel raised by a golden retriever I still remember all of the answers to the trivial pursuit cards of my childhood but modern adult names are you know yea Poem inspired by Langston Hughes's "Dream Deferred" from The Panther & The Lash. This is wholesale thievery from the original poem. Same structure (though I added a couplet), same rhyme scheme and similar language. Here's the original. Rainbow Flag, Half Mast
Adam Stone What happens to a massacre replaced by a constantly tragic news cycle? Does it get washed away like blame in a hurricaned city? Or dry up like a well of unsupervised pity? Do its victims finally find peace with their names role called on a press release? Does it get filed as notes for the survivors' therapists when the media changes the word homophobe to terrorist? Maybe it just frays like a rainbow flag made of cotton until it's just another mass shooting forgotten |
InteractionalityAn ongoing conversation between writers and the text that they're reading. Archives
December 2023
Categories
All
|