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I'm going back and rereading the poetry books that initially excited me about the written and spoken word. First up, Mark Doty's Atlantis. This is the second of probably three interactions about how my response to this book changed over twenty years. The first one is here. Rebuilding Atlantis At Twenty-Nine
1. The Shape Of Things The subject of the night's workshop is line breaks and how they shape the way the reader interprets the poem. I hate American waterfall tercets. In fact, all unnecessarily shaped stanzas detract from my interest in what a poet is trying to say. I understand they think it looks pretty. It gives me a headache. I still love Mark Doty's work even if I don't like how it's laid on the page. 2. Emerald Legacy If you look closely at this handful of sand Turquoise and emerald Sapphire and crushed pearl All this silt All this emerald Sand is only brown from a distance Shattered rocks Crushed coral Once royal and thriving Now loose foothold for children to build into wet castles Everything beautiful looks plain from a distance There is nothing alluring when the polish has been ground into well grounds Emerald at fingertips So what Tiny grains of quartz small enough to sprinkle over corn flakes Beauty tastes terrible Gets stuck in teeth Opal amongst beige Everything looks so beige until you really stare Flakes of emerald sparkle through the blah There is always something living thriving despite the paper bag covering our textbook lives Always something emerald if you know how to look Not where to How to 3. Grief Is Exhausting And Everywhere I didn't see ryan's sickness until it killed him I didn't look for comfort in shoots of dune grass I didn't imagine our future coming to a point Curling to fist I didn't imagine we needed a lighthouse to protect us Shimmer of crest Agate shadows It wasn't until i had to turn around that i ever noticed the shape of my own shadow lacking his beside me
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I'm going back and rereading the poetry books that initially excited me about the written and spoken word. First up, Mark Doty's Atlantis. This is the first of probably three interactions about how my response to this book changed over twenty years. Sidenote, the title is a line from my poem, How To Survive A Sixty Hour Work Week On Just Above Minimum Wage. While it is, of course, a reference to the lost city, it is also a reference to Mark Doty's book and the time of my life when I first read it. Atlantis At Nineteen
1. Colorblindness Sun starved leaves A handful of wet beach ready for sculpture The color of a paper bag under transparent tape protecting textbooks from my clumsy adolescence Horseshoe crab shell All of these things we'd touched together And all i could think of when you took off your hat in your parents' basement was You have brown hair It was only in the darkness that I could realize the misdiagnosis of your hair color Two years of loving someone without noticing this basic physical trait I was still flash cards at lust Heart Sex Breath Touch At a bar with my coworkers from the Reconnaissance Faire I didn't note the leather taut atlassing the twin planets of the wax maiden as the exhaust of her day and her bourbon warmed my ear I thought why is this woman blowing in my ear? Everything so straight forward I didn't even know her name just the job she weekended for two months of the year The best part of her year when her ex took her two twelve year old sons and she dipped hands and roses into hot wax and blew hot air into the ears of nineteen year old gay boys too paralyzed to turn their heads I was of course staring at you a single row of straight white stones the lower shelf never cresting your bottom lip On the drive home you kissed your own hot air towards me without so much as leaning closer This was how I learned to love with distance 2. Strangers & Family Members Are Fiction I did not choose Mark Doty's "Long Point Light" for its language for how I would later imagine it an apt description of our relationship You liked lighthouses I was too stiff for "Homo Shall Not Inherit" The assignment read a poem to a diverse group of people ask them to tell you what the poem means Diverse on Cape Cod in 1998 meant my ashen mother my pasty boss the blanched friends of the pale children I nannied the cobweb customers at my corporate record store job my eggshell psychology classmates Diverse meant not the same age job level of education All these diverse listeners patiently described what this poem which was so obviously about how every day was a new opportunity to be honest with you and myself was so obviously about how I could see metaphor only in things you cared about All of these diverse listeners presented me with their own incorrect translations of this obvious poem Mistaking Doty's hazing and flickering as an invitation to build their own lighthouse to monument I bought whiteboard I mod podged photos of your favorite lighthouses printed out all these wrong interpretations of what was obviously our poem and threw away everyone else's truth I drew crude approximations of boats emerald fiberglass like your favorite color of seaglass polyurethaned wood like your hair silver like your car barn red like your duvet Each boat labeled with the description of an imaginary person The waves beneath them fake quotes I attributed to them each one a different way I looked at the poem except of course yours Who else had ever had an opinion that mattered? 3. There Is Never Enough Ocean I was twenty and selfish without understanding what my self was like everytwenty like everyyounglover I read Atlantis but came away with only "Long Point Light" said everything else was ocean and shimmer I had enough ocean around me enough shimmer when I tried to look to the future Today I read another Juan Felipe Herrera collection, Notes On The Assemblage. Coming up with interactions with his work is difficult. He languages complex and phrases linebreaks deliberate huh. I enjoy his image words that sudden and then. But for this exercise, I merely modeled my title after one of his (Saturday Nite At The Buddhist Cinema). Thursday Afternoon
At The Pessimists' Laundromat And Cookie Dough Cafe My cousin caught a Lickitung while the tennis balls pummeled the pillows in the industrial dryer Avoiding writing music is a full time job he says moving his head with the air fluff 's gentle tossing I am chewing the generically lettered candies from the peanut butter cookie dough cone My receipts laid out on the table I don't know why you bother with taxes my cousin who doesn't want to be identified in my writing and isn't even related to me says You don't drive anymore You don't have kids to school You're never sick Fuck the system man Save up your cash and go to dsfkzdljjhgxbaemlfxjh I'm not sure I like peanut butter cookie dough in a cone with confetti swirls But I also don't enjoy doing laundry or paying taxes I'm pretty sure my current lifestyle depends on me doing things I've never liked in places I never imagined would exist |
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