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I've been spending the last couple of months working on a project called I Just Want Every Teacher To Live but all of the poems keep ending up sounding like other poems I've written. Recently, Catherine Weiss has posted about a form they invented called The Rex. Their description of the form is as follows: stanza 1: factoid from history or science, etc stanza 2: personal commentary on the factoid stanza 3: a digression stanza 4: a reckoning stanza 5: a repetition of stanza #2 with new meaning & context I've rewritten what is likely the first poem of the manuscript to be a Rex. I might end up writing more of them in the future. Thanks, Catherine. Appreciation 1. The shadow blister effect is a visual phenomenon
in which a shadow bulges as it approaches another shadow It takes place when two objects are at different distances from the light source The object nearest the light source begins blocking the light from the more distant object so that it appears to reach out and pull the other object’s shadow into it 2. Mrs taylor taught every aspect of school to our kindergarten class Reading Math Art Music Gym Storytime Recess Everything I remember only three things about her besides her appearance She owned a player piano that she used when hosting singalong field trips to her house She hastily built a platform out of chair legs and wooden pallets the day roaches invaded our school during morning session And once a week During naptime she would select one child to pose for a silhouette drawing Where she would shine a light on your profile And trace the shadow She would hold on to it for a week Adding details from memory Your eyes Your smile The shadow of your sundial nose The further from the moment she turned the light off The more your silhouette resembled your face 3.What do you say she asked After she turned off the light? It looks good I reply No What do you say? I am staring at the lightbulb as it grows dark I like it She sighs Close Thank you I smile You’re welcome She stares at my face Thank you I smile You’re welcome? She sighs Thank You I smile Thank You? She smiles You’re welcome 4. Thank you became a mantra to every teacher Every friend Every relative Thank you Thank you Mrs taylor says I should say Thank you Thank you mrs taylor I am a player piano of appreciation Don’t ever again want to feel like i haven’t shown proper thank you Tell me how i can thank someone properly Everyone does so much for me Even when i don’t know how to ask Thank you Thank you every mrs taylor for trying to make me look more like i felt inside when i was still a child For being patient with my bewilderment at what people wanted from me When all i wanted was everyone to be happy with me Thank you 5. Mrs taylor taught every aspect of school to our kindergarten class Reading Math Art Music Gym Storytime Recess Everything Once a week During naptime she would select one child to pose for a silhouette drawing Where she would shine a light on your profile And trace the shadow She would hold on to it for a week Adding details from memory Your eyes Your smile The shadow of your sundial nose The further from the moment she turned the light off The more your silhouette resembled your face
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Starting off September with one of my favorite poets from when I was in middle school. Rereading No Thanks by EE Cummings. A lot of the typography-based poems feel really dated and unnecessarily convoluted. But there are also a few of my favorite poems by dead white guys in this collection. (And this book is entirely responsible for my use of parentheses the way Nikki Giovanni's Those Who Ride The Night Winds is responsible for my use of justified text in poems.) I (Do Not) Hate ((The Moon) The Way You Hate
Adam Stone I (do not) hate ((the moon) the way you hate spiders)(though both crawl across) our horizon too often )That's not quite correct (No)( Wait (I do) // When you set your (stupid) eyes on a target )love?( )need?( )wallet?( )shelter( me ) you quantify the precise velocity you can reach before it (or she) (or he) (this time actually me) will decide to flee (or rather watch you flung) \\ I do not hate I study indifferent now thanks to your fingers (spidering spidering) I wait until I can feel (pull of the moon) no more anything for anything like your name I do not call it hate Though it feels the same In college, I took a class called Poets In Massachusetts, where we studied sometimes localish poets but sometimes stretched just what it meant to be "in Massachusetts". For one of the final projects, we were asked to take a poem by an author we'd read, and ask several non-poetry readers what they thought of it. We, then, posted the answers and collage-type images onto giant whiteboards and displayed them on the walls of the classroom during the final weeks. I chose Mark Doty's "Long Point Light" from Atlantis. If I still had that stupid whiteboard, I might have cheated and posted some of the quotes here and called it a day. The project certainly created "an interaction". Instead, I've gone back to one of my favorite Doty poems, "Gross Fugue", and put my own spin on what a fugue would look like as a poem. I might come back to this poem and give it a more satisfactory ending, but I was really feeling Doty's last line There is no resolution in the fugue. The Fugue Electric, Unfinished
Adam Stone I go for three weeks without power because i will not be home for most of them and when i am home it will be daybright and the breeze keeps everything cool enough There are boats perched Obese vultures precarious in exhausted trees still dizzy from hurricane So not having power seems trivial Our house stands Our trees bereft of anything but birds and unmoored trash I have a battery powered lamp for camping but no desire to camp outside of my home Finally this little lamp has purpose Daylight is for the kayaks The rubber rafts claim the 9-5 We do not need electricity at night we have fire and all the appropriate snacks to eat like spoiled scouts The ladder to the zip line still standing though half the tree it was moored to collapsed into the climbing wall all i do is talk these days . those days . all days . but i won't bring anyone into my powerlessness . too dark . of course . too phosphorous my faults . the apartment shambled by a lack of light . piles of laundry . sleep in the daytime . talk to no one but cats . no one needs to see Cliff is the only one of us not allowed a lighter A book of matches Allowed to carry wood to the clearing but not place it in the flames When i am awake during the day i leave the house lit by the sun but barren I go off to the cofeehouses to charge my technology for the coming darkness How fortunate this hurricane in august The camp asunder The boathouse secured before the storm The canoes The kayaks The grub tubs The sunfish all safe But the windows lanced by branches and a door flown off the archery shed Cliff set fire to the fields behind our camp last summer I forgot to take my name off the account of a previous address How long until the boats collapse what's left of the trees? I never bothered to call the electric company It burned for an hour before anyone noticed Now I'm paying for it but with insomnia instead of money there was also the summer we cottaged next to our cousins until our new house was finished . a full summer of pond but no shower . minnows don't survive long as pets . flushing because at least running water if not light . but a real house just next door . also empire strikes back sleeping bag . generic flashlight . unscary ghost stories . the only jokes that stayed with me were unfunny and racist . surely someone told a joke without prejudice . lunches in the gazebo . a terrified parakeet . watching dragonflies fuck . ghost stories in the empty cottages . canada geese alarm clocks . big hiss . no electricity but access to a motorboat . jet skis . too young to waterski . cookouts on the other side of the lake . people who used the word cottage to describe houses bigger than any i've ever lived in . Cliff never told me Raking the branches off the beach how the fire smelled Every mattress seems alive with crumbs why he did it Plastic over windows when it's too dark to examine even though we shared a tent Paid overtime for Insomnia because of clean-up crew He didn't want witnesses even The satisfaction of too much darkness after the fact a job must done 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. |
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