Junkyard Quote X, Week No Longer

1. the gauntlet of sexism

Improv 5, Week 12

I laugh on the tongue like alabaster, all my A's
pummel. When I'm in the word I tumble:
the great down up of a Shakespeare recitation.
Call us something, call us sonnet
but do we really need to name this thing?
After all, what's the purpose
and the sanity of relationships? They hurt,
yes, but sometimes feel like something
slipping, falling like night on the names of gravestones.
Hands in death. Hands til death. Hands took
all purpose, my purpose. What is this?
 Step up, you've had ample time
to watch me, failed and miserly.
Now grab me at the wrist, squeeze tight,
I'm going to open.

Improv 3-4, Week 12

Improv 3

Which is Why I Told You to Leave

In middle school, newly acquainted with the treasures
ofpuberty continuously swelling along my chest, I though
I would take care of my cousin's boy problem,
and putting on my tightest shirt, I pressed myself of his door post,
hip riding its wood like the juke joint singer in the Color Purple.
He was Hispanic, his name---Vladmir, and as he watched me
the contours of his shorts bloomed like marigolds.
Another night, huddled in dark, his tongue popped like Prosecco
against my teeth as he rolled words like girlfriend against gravel,
across the fence post. This is how love starts, I decided.
Hard as a tulip bulb, waiting to pierce the brush
and all that sexy hubbub that comes with growing
and flaunting one's leaves to the north wind, though, like you
a flower can never brave the winter.

Improv 4 (loose move to iambic)

Which is Why I Told You to Leave

In middle school, newly acquainted to the jewels
of puberty chiseled along my chest,
I thought I'd take my cousin's boy problem--
put on my tightest shirt and pressed myself
against his door, hip riding wood like House.
Hispanic, Vladmir watched, while contours bloomed
like marigolds inside his shorts. One night
we dressed in dark. Our tongues rolled like merlot.
Love starts this way, I knew, all packed and hard
as tulip bulbs, waiting to pierce the brush
and all that sexy hubub that comes with growth
and flaunting one's own leaves to wind. Although,
like you, a flower never braves the snow.

Critical Response 1, Week 12

Response to Kelsey's Williams Improv, Week 12:

Addressing the Williams improv: Though the alliteration in "hesitated" and "hospital" presents itself nicely in the ear, there seems to be a prose feeling to this particular draft that makes the first line seem long and clunky. Consider removing "I must admit"? All in all, there's nothing surprising to the first line. It doesn't push me as a reader in any particular direction and though the looked enjambment is doing something, I don't know if it's enough something to keep pulling me forward. "Profound change" is incredibly abstracted and "awakening" doesn't add much to it. What does something profound or changed look like? "Saw" in line 2 weak in comparison to "gripped" in the fourth line. Ratchet up to gripped like proportions or beyond. In the third line we have that return to the "new world" reference you seem to fixate on in some of your drafts. I totally follow your interest. Leap away with it, I think new world can work here if we're talking about a woman who changes. How is the new world "stiff and defined" when created by a woman "awakened?" Familiar--abstract. Sudden emergence of the word "your" in line 5. Now we have 4 characters, if we include the daughter, and the your kind of just slips in and falls off. Reconsider the POV, perhaps? I like the last line, though I'm not sure how toes can be fallen or who they even belong to.

Write on,
Diamond

Improv 2, Week 12

Reworked beginning of "The Abandoned" which is no longer "The Abandoned"

If she could talk she'd tell him the right shade,
gold to accent the red tweed folding against her limp hands
or "Terra-Cotta", a cap to the foundation of her blue eyes.
Instead, her neck, like a glorious Greek pillar

crumbles, and her husband chooses his own hue.
His hand sweeps her cheek. Together, they move on.
Tomorrow he will paint her sweet with all his words,
force the flush back to her sallow face. Who is he kidding?

Junkyard Quote 1-2, Week 12

What Would I Say FB generator:

1. I laugh on the tongue.

2. I laugh on the bandwagon with this insane piece of technology. I wouldn't have to recite Shakespeare.

3. When I'm in the word!

4. A relationship needs titling?

5. Hands took the purpose, my purpose!

6. the purpose and sanity of relationships

7. It hurts but it seems like slipping and falling on a package in my stomach.

8. He's had ample time to watch something failed and miserly.

9. But I have to get their names inscribed on their gravestones.

10. I'm going to open.

Improv 1, Week 12

Elegy for my Grandmother

For you, Sunday breakfast was grits, fried grouper and anything
reclined in the freezer with a crown of ice.
Your knuckles, swollen like ripe grapes, swayed and stuttered
through biscuit dough as my sister and I ducked
in cabinets and pantry shelves to bring you whatever you called for.

I remember you in the kitchen of my one-bedroom apartment
while I fret over the blunt edge of a knife that barely carves
past the hirsuit flesh of a Kroger-bought peach to its core.
Not once did you ever make us cobbler, not once
did cinnamon dust your wrist red with crushed spice or
the slough of burning stars you'd one day hide behind.

While my maternal family progressed northward to bury
the fruit of your bones in a Carolina plot,
I was at the mall, teasing the pleats of a star-studded skirt.
I didn't remember you then.

After breakfast we'd crowd around your wheelchair,
watch television. You'd rest your hand on my head, fall asleep.
Your touch washed over me like syrup.
I loved you when you lived.

With the cobbler done, I take a hot scoop with ice cream. One bite
and I can tell something integral is missing.

In memoriam, I obediently release balloons for your birthday--
July 4th. My only hope
is that the fireworks do not pop them before they shrink
to an indiscernible seed in the sky.
I never cry. Rain doesn't fall up. 

Junkyard Quote 1-2, Week 11

1. we have feared the pieces in you..as if they could be pieces of us.
2. plush pincushion, somehow related / to the statues that wept.

Improv 3. Week 11

To the Lady Who Called Me Racist

though our skin hums the same hymn,
though our shoulders buckle from the weight of chains
our ancestors carried, shackled
and shipped like Wenge to forget their roots
in the Americas, Lady, fuck you. Lady,
to hate you is to hate myself.
Or part of myself. Like Whitman
I contain multitudes.
I contain Spanish beaches and the endless roll of white sand on sea.
I contain San Juan, the history
of seventeen siblings and my abuelita
combing her fingers through the snapping spine of chicken feathers,
never imagining that one day she might mix her hips
on an army man from the Caribbean.
No Lady, I will love you as I've been taught to love,
deep and forbidden; my great-grandmother
snuck in her home a white man pretending
to be a salesman so that he might hold her
against him, seek the inside
of her uterine spaces and pillow talk
of wedding bands the law would not allow. Oh Lady,
later, I will snake my hand down my boyfriend's jeans
to feel the creamy heat of his inner thigh and it will be then
that I will know you,
raw and aching like a rusted link cast
around my neck, wrapping
until the length clasps, tightening.

Improv 2, Week 11

Ode to the Thigh Gap

You have eluded me these last ten years
though I have sought you out in leg planks,
or the whizzing whirl of the elliptical--a spinning wheel
to turn you to creation.
You are only seen when you are missing, felt
only when you are filled with the raw rub of skin
and polyester--jeans look so much better with you,
and I love you as I know you--pinnacle
of feminine, stretch of sex, every woman's
dream come true. You're no whore--
anyone who wants you has to work for it.
I imagine you under him, your heat
intermingling, smooth like fine silk
along the hem of his hands and I want to thank you
but I remember all those days I starved for you,
all those girls that starved for you
until their hip bones popped dangerously
against air and the round joints of their knees
worked up and down like needle heads;
I wail and the daughters echo my woes,
Olds, Rich, Bishop.

Improv 1, Week 11

Dad

I have been letting you down since I burst,
slick with birth from my mother's gut.
Bellowing, whisped with rust-red hair,
you knew I was yours, but somewhere
in the take-order of genetics, I forgot to claim
those dangling parts of men--
how disappointed you must have been...

Improv 3, Week 10

When you curved that gnarled paw around me,
and wrapped me in your sunshine hug, I couldn't forget
all those times I hated you
from across the desks and at home,
huddled over some truth you meant to enlighten me with,
how I whispered it every time you turn to me
and split that ancient face with smiles,
my God, I'd take your eyes with me to lunch
and stab their mental image with my fork,
gnawing through burger patties
and strands of meaty rib, pretending
it was the corner of your soul.

Improv 2, Week 10

Believe me when I say
I do not do, I do not want
to be you, the buzz
that hums incessantly above my shoulder blade,
nipping at my neck with your noose tongue.
You'd hang me
if I hadn't stopped answering
your late night calls, your persistent push
until there was no edge to stand on.
Mother you are not the truth,
there's no truth left in you,
save from the miraculous birth sometime before
you said I do.

Improv 1, Week 10

The touch of something silly.
The need to squeeze, to pull until the joints pop.
To feel it all give way.
To smell the aching, the longing to be
let go, let off the leash that's slowly
tighter now, that's pressing in around
the carotid and the bobbing Adam's apple,
pushing like a mallet through this carnival
of tightening, it's tightening
and not much longer now we'll feel
it all give way.

Critical Response 1, Week 10

Response to Sydney's Improv 5, Week 8:

The lack of line breaks coupled with the emphasis on narrative makes this improv move like smooth and wonderful prose. I think what the draft could benefit from would be instances of jarring concision, what first came to mind was the sentence, "If Penelope knew anything absolute it was beauty--that she alone possessed." What we have know seems to add this odd element of narcissism to Penelope, which you could retain if that's what you're going for but assuming you're not I think some quick tucks would benefit: If Penelope knew anything, it was beauty. Maybe some more in the description: Hair--long waves of fire, eyes allure like siren sounds. She knew she was a goddess. I like what you're doing here. I'm glad we can go back and address Penelope, how she was feeling forced to wait at home for her adulterous husband, expected to be chaste only to have her husband return and act downright ridiculous. Anyway, please expand. I'd like to know a little more about the real Persephone--the one who lives, thinks, breathes, and misses the angst of a husband. Kudos.

Junkyard Quotes 1-2, Week 10

1. Intercourse offends me. I want to fuck.
2. I can't remain objective about dolphins.

Junkyard Quote 1, Week 9

From one of those Did You Know posts:

Drowning in salt water is different from drowning in fresh water. It takes longer, and salt water draws blood from the cells into your lungs. You drown in your own blood.

One user responded: "That is so metal".

Critical Commentary 1, Week 8

Response to Andrew's Improv 5, Week 7:

I think I want to take this piece by piece, if that's ok with you. First line, fine, but I really love that second line. Perhaps syntactically odd, or simply in need of a colon, but uncanny, interesting, visual. I'm also curious about this personalization of the liana. There seems to be some fiddling with disjointing, a literal display of body parts. I will say that what strikes me as odd in this particular section is the move from halved fingers to a whole hand, which seems to be the start of a bodily connection as opposed to the prior. Mammal contours sits rather stumpy on the tongue and just does not work with the sweeping latinate sound this draft is trying to retain. Next, 3rd to last stanza. Suffer doesn't working there. As a reader I paused and thought: suffering? It calls too much attention to its own mechanics, the slant rhyme with suppers which would be cooler if I didn't see the machinery. Also, first section where we have these consistent breaks with a comma, which could work but it would require me to see more of this particular sense of disconnect in the rest of the work. It seems to fizzle off by the end and I'd like to see that idea carried out. As far as a narrative is concerned, there seems to be one in places but its rather obscured. I keep meaning to tell you this but I think Amy Pence would be a good read for you. She'd bring out the narrative sense in your writing while still showing you how to incorporate this lush and latinate movement you have in your work.

Improv 5, Week 8

A baby doll. Face speckled with dust.
Even his frown cornered with some freckle
of dry mud, he calls to leopards
spotted and powerful, the tight mound
of their shoulders meeting their knecks,
flexing, arching, bending to feed or
sink the claws into the damp mounds
of jungle, scratching away the deep brown clumps
until the earth moves, fresh and clotted,
gives up, pudgy and glazed, some doll head glazed
with dirt. ....

Improv 4, Week 8

There are no little girls here. Not anymore.
Lost to the swaying, amputated spirit
of these dolls--these many dolls that peer
from the mangled hiding places of trees,
wire wrapping their necks, that little girl
slipped off many years ago. They say
he took her place, brushing his hand
along their tattered limbs, running fingers
through their webby hair, so much care.

Improv 3, Week 8

What my brain writes at 5:45 in the morning:

Why do these people soak me in their intimacy?
I'm just a cashier, do I need to hear the bass
of your bedroom voice warbled through phone space,
finding a way to thump on my ear drums?
What is it about groceries that makes a woman
slide her hand into the back of her husband's pants?
Maybe we aren't selling groceries at all.
They say oysters are an aphrodisiac. If so,
we keep sex vacuum-sealed in seafood, or saucy
in white wine and garlic on aisle eight.
And maybe what I'm ringing isn't noise
but the de-evolution of "Slow Jams".
Baby, I've moved beyond the register
of voyeurism. No checks, no balances,
I wanna let go and hold you light
like an artichoke, careful like a glass
bottle of IBC. Me and this store,
we're the creators of attraction,
we've got something to sell--step up.
Move quick, you're in the express lane now.
This is where our transaction ends.

Junkyard Quote 2, Week 8

Creepiest Place on Earth

Improv 2, Week 8

She moves like the unraveling of dawn, each muscle
creeping to a slow wake in her wheelchair.
In the Kroger checkout, her husband holds her
chair handle in one hand, a basket in the other,
before he releases to set his groceries, cheerfully,
on my lane.
                 I smile at her,
meet the open-eyed puncture of her blue gaze.
Five cans later her hand stutters into air, wobbly wave.
I start talking and her husband steps forward,
dapper, bow-tied and outlined
with suspenders. He's all smiles, loves this:
the bounce of my voice in his ears
while his wife sits, mute, head drifting, her neck giving
to its weight like origami to a finger's press. He and I,
we parry puns. She used to be a part of this.
She used to stand between us
writing out checks in her slow, shaky hand
...

Junkyard Quote 1, Week 8

Let's talk about some war poems.

Improv 1, Week 8

My stepmother told me she loved me once.

Only once she told me she loved me.

 At the kitchen table, (one of those faux oak

numbers connoting intimacy in a tight oval)

we confessed, through tears, our shortcomings

in daughter things

.... 

Improv 3, Week 7

It was breast cancer awareness month.
After being forced to ask for donations
for six hours, an onslaught  of confirmation
and denial, mostly denial, I asked a woman
old and sour face, green shawl swooped over
the curved mountain of her shoulders,
if she would like to make a donation
and, certain she'd say no, I almost missed
the sad scrunch of her face, like pinching
the wet and puckered chicken skin.
Her face molded into it's self with sadness
and all her wrinkles deepened, the limpness
of her thin hair sagged into the grooves
of her forehead. Through bouts of agony
she nodded, explained her mother was fighting
stage three cancer while I scanned
the pink note, a floppy representation
of the ribbon with a blank box for signatures.
I handed it to her and she wrote a note
to her mother, telling her to fight on.
I placed my hand to her shoulder and felt
the world move, like a finger on Tangshan
as all the ink stones and rice bowls rattled
into a great pit of earth, so too did I shake
and the both of us, trembling, rocking
took in her wobbly message: Fight on,
Faye Lively, mom, fight on
and I couldn't help thinking any woman
with that last name, couldn't know when
to give up, shouldn't know what it's like
when the Earth falls open.

Improv 2, Week 7

When Marie Antoinette was a shepherdess,
she'd flaunt her legs in peasant clothes, work
paths around the orchards and the cows.

The Queen's Hamlet was a real farm,
with peasants bought to work the land
and cows cleaned and kept for the sweetest milk.

How, as her neck met blade, her thoughts
must have flashed to that place, burned
and hen-less, no longer waiting for her flounce
and step, like so many man-made truths.

Improv 1, Week 7

Two accidents, one stretch of road that zips
steep into a busy highway, stamped
with houses high with bushes near
their windows, like perfectly tapered
fingernails picking apart the sky.

I've only been in two accidents and each one
took place here under the wide awe
of windows, the first with my stepmother,
small-legged and sassy, broken to shudders
behind a front hood smashed to the bumper
of another car.

It was here, on the phone with my father,
seatbelt off and face flying into fabric seats,
that I sought out logic, so that when the phone flew
and I, confused, decided I should scream.

Critical Commentary 1, Week 7

Response to Daniel's Improv 1, Week 7:

I'm really interested in this destabilizing of writing--this idea of writing as harmful. We all think of writing as a sort of escape, a way of living and experiencing, but the reality is that writing is an arduous process, exhausting and to a certain extreme, rather self-destructive. Much like a sword without the hilt, one often wields writing but stabs themselves in the process as well.

Moving to a more micro approach to the writing, though I like this idea of one's own blood being inadequate to express the soul, I feel like the opening line could be tighter, more powerful. The enjambment doesn't really do much at this time and the word "soulfully" hits my ear oddly. As well, does one ask their ancestors for their burden or to help should his own burden? Vein juice is once again a little odd to the ear, however I love the next moment of self-inquisition then followed by the beautiful imagery of ink. Please pursue this further in the future.

Diamond

Junkyard Quote 1-2, Week 7

Rather than language I'm capturing uncanny subjects to write about in the future:

Six drown in an attempt to save chicken fallen in well:
[x]

Bimodal Sleep Patterns
[x]

Improv 5, Week 6

Rework of a Carol Ann Duffy Improv from before.

It must have been weeks, the scratching.

Her fur careening to somersault

in evening's hungriest hour, when sleep gnaws

the peaked head of sun and launches

her fleas to feeding.

In the tub, her nails seize porcelain.

She dreads the faucet, the honey-milk

shampoo. I work my fingers along

her spine's jewels, flick the flattened

thoraxes of fleas from her suds.

Critical Commentary 1, Week 6

Response to Taylor's Improv 3, Week 6:

So bypassing the obvious hyperuse of the word "pearl", which was clearly an intentional bit of play and thus saying it was somewhat overused would be unnecessary, I will jump in to say there are moments here worth keeping. I always find it interesting when poems utilize repetition in order to force a certain awareness into me as a reader on the way words function. Generally that repetition forces me to create new meaning or different understanding of the function of the word as a verb or noun. However here, because the word “pearls” never really changes how it works, this leads to the feeling of triteness. Lines that I feel like could be carried over to another draft: Told us something in Chinese  / that mentioned pearls; and shakes his head at pearls. / nods his head at pearls. I also like the ending question, like a method of purpose from the writer.

Improv 4, Week 6

Un

Unzip the word, pare it
to the root.
Have worlds.
Have branched off worlds
that live closed off,
open to meaning.
How funny, two letters undo
everything.
Every law, every linguistical
system--unfair.
Here where the dark undoes
our lips, we no longer
do late night things
but undulate
in the muddled swamp
of monosyllables
and the deep throat
of the guttural.
Without it, even unity
would still place I to you.

Improv 3, Week 6

Taking this moment to stress the reality of a speaker, not the poet.

Improv of Amy Pence’s 8^th Grade Locker Combination:

I stopped liking grape jelly years ago.

When I chose strawberry, my whole life spread

into the endless possibilities of choice and sandwich.

When I worked the knife along the jam rim

and rubbed its seeded goo into the grooves

of my whole wheat, I saw marmalade

and toasted bread, whose heat melted

the peanut butter like the promise

of something that could have been real--

like you, had I not waited several hours

in a plastic gown to lose you, in netted cap

and booties watching 13 Going on 30,

thinking you would never know those numbers

or the taste of a childhood staple

and not even losing a tear.  

Improv 2, Week 6

Rework of Mosquito

Outside, the dark gnaws our seats

though a citronella’s light outlines

your face. Over wine, you tell me

you don’t miss her and I’d hear you if

I didn’t recall other nights like this.

At cocktail parties, where your eyes

worked past me in dim bars of light,

to search for some sliver

of her smile against the crowd.

Or the nights she wasn’t there—

how you looked for her

in the soft down of your pillow, or

in the noisy toss of winter wind

and summer shade—hell, any place

that wasn’t my outstretched arms.

Seriously, you tell me, it’s done,

and yes, I’d hear you

but I can’t seem to shake

my urge to press this mosquito

into the candle, to feel the wax give in,

to hear it, buzzing, drown. 

Junkyard Quote 1-2, Week 6

1. My rage is multi-factored and many-layered. 
2. "I took these creatures as I found them on the shoreline, and then placed them in 'living' positions, bringing the back to 'life', as it were. Reanimated, alive again in death." --Nick Brandt

Improv 1, Week 6

Here.

The fountain of youth is a salt lake in Tanzania,

whose wide mouth plucks birds and petrifies

their bones below a gray and stillborn surface.

I’ve seen the photos—doves with wings tucked

like paper airplanes to their chests,

flamingoes whose feathers pare to the slim

scoop of their mummified necks.

Imagine it was our bodies bubbling down there,

deep in the ten foot steep of natron solution,

calling up threads and taut lines

of muscle we know…

Critical Commentary 1, Week 5

Response to Kelsey's Improv 3, Week 5:

Curiously the whole poem seems to teeter on the word "snap" to me. It's an interesting verb, incredibly charged with brief, monosyllabic potential. It brings a strange multiplicity that I wouldn't say doesn't show up in the beginning, but appears so strongly by this point that it almost affects my reread, double-so with the word "snap" functioning as an enjambment so that I'm seeing images of breakdown both physically and mentally--coupled with the word "cracking" in line three that sort of hints at this gradual and then abrupt undoing, like the finding of eggs in a hunt. I think what that line creates is a really successful opening for an off-ramp--a release from your Easter Egg Hunt trigger into the slowly shattering unravel of the mind and its faltering mental functions.

Improv 2, Week 5

Improv of Two Lorries by Seamus Heaney
line: "the conceit of a coalman..."

Even conventions, with their loud crowds
and synonymous sound are
a metaphor for the mundane.
Here too, we dress our best for eyes
and the pull of their admiration, their soft look
working over our prim curls and pressed
hemlines--we gather for the grind
and shuffle of our feet in formation,
pushing to our next meeting, our next panel,
wondering if this is the place
that will finally accept me.

Improv 1, Week 5

Improv of Williams's Red Wheel Barrow

the quick hit
nails

the jaw's bone
hammers

hollow sound out
yesterday

her face less
full

Junkyard Quotes 1-2, Week 5

1. Because then I'm like: if it's not about me, it's about everyone else. I have to make this a good experience for everyone else. But I can't juggle it all for everyone, you know. Being self-centered is so much easier.

2. Love me a little less please.

Improv 5, Week 4

Pastoral improv

A blister of blue patched by clouds.
The hazy heat of summer rippling waves
off the beach--thick and white, like ash
or dust, spinning around rapid feet
in a spin of sand. Powdered, an underbelly
rich and dark and packed, leaping up
to meet the splay of toes against its back.

Improv 4, Week 4

Improv of Thom Gunn's "The J Car"
I tried "rhyming" by number of letters in a word.

I was standing outside of myself when my head blew off,
watched as both body and mind scattered out
under the watchful eye of some third consciousness,
vaguely aware of splintered sensibilities.
Cut scene, split by smoke and ghostly awareness
head nestled in a bascart, ready to reanimate,
perhaps to tell just what it is it sees
when its blank brown eye grabs us and eats?

Improv 3, Week 4

Improv of Bishop's One Art, "Accept the fluster / of lost door keys"

Enjoy the blunder of missing mind. The thought
abandoned somewhere from bedroom
to kitchen door, not old age or stress
but the elusive art of long-term
conception and all it's brain jogging
work, like some skill that always rests
on the tongue's tip--a vaguely familiar taste,
no different than rosemary or
the sweet heat of cinammon, even
the bitter taste of adolescent anger--
some child feud forgotten half-way
through playtime, recalled now,
wrist-deep in soap suds, scrubbing
the residue of smothered porkchops--
what once was part of some pig's belly,
now a piece missing and forgotten.

Improv 2, Week 4

Improv of Theodore Roethke's "The Waking"

It was me who drank the juice box clean.
It's cherry-sweet cajoled my teeth,
forgive me, love, but I had to drink.

Perhaps it was the condensation's gleam
that drew me to it's refreshing wreath?
Ah, it was me who drank the juice box clean.

Sweet tang, caused my taste buds' spring
to launch, frenzied: a lover's tease,
forgive me, darling, but I had to drink.

....

Improv 1, Week 4

Weird Gwendolyn Brooks improv:

He was here. He
lived near. He

sung songs. He
lied long. He

shined shoes. He
knew brews. He

fought fate. He
met gates.

Critical Commentary 1, Week 4

Response to Daniel's Improv 3, Week 4:

I think I'll tackle this one line at a time. First line, I think the verb fails to present something new to me. The sun, after all, "rises" and falls, though I will say I like the idea of the sun "surging," which is definitely something different though I'm not sure how I feel about the phoenix/flowers enjambment. I understand the "phoenix" in the second line is supposed to imply the mythical bird but the strange lack of article, "a phoenix," hints to me that there will be something more than just "phoenix". "Wind kisses" seem to be a bit much, kind poesy against the flowers and petals that jut and shudder. I like the idea of (what I assume to be the flowers) dying, but immediately after we have a return to the word "sun," which at least this time, creeps. Another appearance of the word "kisses". I'm not convinced what the word "yet" is contradicting in the tenth line. Looking at the piece overall, it seems odd that the speaker doesn't come in until the end, and that the draft would benefit from some expansion, an explanation of the smoke, which I could see peeking its way into the draft with the sun crept behind water, and the idea of fire and ash with the phoenix. I'd like to see more with this.

Junkyard Quote 2, Week 4

"It smells like homeschool to me."

Junkyard Quote 1, Week 4

"Greens, blues, reds and lewds. All in my head! Like a bread basket of contraband... you hide in your veins."

Junkyard Quote 3, Week 3

I never noticed how close fiends and friends were to one another until you said that.

Improv 5, Week 3

A return to improv 1, week 2, improving Bishop. Working on another stanza.

At night, sometimes, I reach up
to the velvet night that streams
like something soundless, a voice split
through the silky texture of dark
I feel until my hand succumbs to sleep,
can no longer sense my blood's course.

Improv 4, Week 3

Improv of Carol Ann Duffy's "Warming Her Pearls"

It must have been weeks, the scratching. Her fur
careens to a somersault, past nails, in evening's
hungriest hour, when sleep gnaws sunlight
and launches her fleas to feeding. I lift her

to the tub again, her nails seize, dreading
faucets or honey-milk shampoo. She shudders,
I work impatiently, my finger's knead
coaxes her spine's jewels. She digs me

under nail's curve, hangs me up
with pain not even fleas feel. Dead,
I flick their flattened thorax from the suds
and scrub her, drown them with the mug's

wet heat. I twist her and every spin her nails
spiral the enamel until her wild nose knocks
the mug and smash and she crashes
to the open weight of my waiting arms.

Critical Response 1, Week 3

Response to Trey's fifth improv (Tornadoes), week 2:

I like it when I can read a draft and immediately seize my teeth into a line, in this case, lines. Right there, smack dab in the middle of a story about tornadoes and we have this mini-story of the grandfather, fashioning a door from scrap lumber--wonderful. Richard Hugo told us to launch away from out triggering subject and I think you did just that here, quite beautifully actually. In those two brief lines I get an idea of an innovative father-figure who is successfully protecting his family in a very subtle way, it's really great. That said, give me more. Allow this to branch off to the grandfather completely. Complicate him. Or commemorate him. Your choice.

Now, looking more closely at the work itself--the opening with the more is indeed interesting and could also be built upon. The idea of the home being the mother's childhood and the grandfather fastens parts to it or fixes it up, functions pretty well as an overall conceit. Because of this, I am not convinced of the neighbors' presence and I find the last line trite. I understand the urge to write about a caring community when these days it becomes less and less existent, but it seems done before. I am much more interested in this mother, pawpaw relationship.

Improv 3, Week 3

Muddled end. Improv Tiara, Mark Doty:

Gnarled veins work through hands that wrap
the handle, fat, like bloated worms or
babies diapered in blue-striped cloth.

An unexpected tenderness, he pushes her chair
with grace not found in his finger's warp,
and each wheel glides like autumn wind.

She sits, erect, the full-bloom of blue
eyes seizing everything. He takes
a corner and she emerges, stiff and wild

though silent, her mouth recumbent
to her head's upended blondeness,
parallel to her red suede shoulders.

We're almost done, he tells her
and her head tilts to meet his words,
slow, like the drain of green from leaves

and he smiles, and she smiles too,
a slow grin that seems to stretch
her face like years, her blue to streaks--

a false speed. The only blur
to flare in her gradient unfurl, watered
by every minute between them.

Junkyard Quote 2, Week 3

"Women don't sweat, they glisten. Women don't fart, they poof."

Junkyard Quote 1, Week 3

1. cemetery songs

Improv 2, Week 3

This needs a lot of work and will probably change before the week is done so excuse the fact that it's so few lines.

We snag a seat in patio dark.
A citronella gleans your face.
Wine bottles push silence.
Nursing every dreg of corked-up booze
you slosh, trembling,
tell me you don't miss her and
I'm leaping eyes across your goatee's
trampoline, recalling its tarp-like feel
that night you kissed my cheek goodbye
with eyes that never pulled from her.
Forgive me
...

Improv 1, Week 3

Elegy improv attempt in parts. 

Blunt knife pares the peachy hirsute

and, somehow, I remember you,

though your hands never dusted in nutmeg red,

nor taught me the taste of battered fruit

thought finds you now , hollow and treasured

in some back-hill plot in the Carolinas, gone.

….

Some flavor unadded—vanilla or heaven’s

soluble condition—that fragrant taste of you that, like life,

has quickly been consumed.

Improv 4, Week 2

Blank Verse

The zing of bitter cinnamon on hand
so sweet this glaze of peachy juice, I want
to lick until I taste the fingered meat,
invite the swollen vision, fragrant fruit
that ages sharp like dust into the mouth.

Critical Response 1, Week 2

Response to Taylor's Improv 3, Week 2:

So hey, I enjoyed this. What I liked most is this negating movement you handled, in my opinion, rather subtly in "We can wonder about everything and nothing..." and again in "something unlike stars." It's a movement I'm trying to work on myself so I like to see other successful attempts at it in order to see what works. Of course, there are moments where the form muddies the work. In places like "as I was vermin" and earlier in "except about winter" could be easily condensed in later drafts for powerful, sonic precision. I think what's central here is this idea of permanence and the attempt to blanket one's self in something permanent, which the speaker admits is "not of you, of me, of we." I also wonder what "we" is and how that lends to the fragility of the relationship? My guess is that the breaking lies mostly within the speaker who views his/herself as "vermin" but is ultimately a meaningless guess until further information is supplied in a future draft.

Improv 3, Week 2

Trochaic pentameter

Faded, cropped to knee. The jeans are buckled.

Wait until the hands remove the belted

strain then close those shameless eyes out to the

horror. Tops unravel like mountains loose,

concrete to the iridescent eye--. 

Improv 2, Week 2

Iambic pentameter(ish)

The crash of feet upon the cobbled steps
that slicks the wall with sound under the wet
and porous stones, the spiral tapered down
to loose waves who grind and lick the shine off coins
and gives the whirl a green, metallic sheen.

Improv 1, Week 2

Improv "A Miracle for Breakfast," Elizabeth Bishop
Improving sestina format (unfinished, "..." = missing stanzas)

In the dark, I waited for the weight of sleep

to press my eyes. Sleep to be split

by an alarm’s scream or the sun’s lithe stream,

 whichever came first. But of course,

sleep never showed up. Sleep never showed up

and I was left dreading the dark.

Why, when my eyes feel nothing but dark

do I forget that stuttered rhythm of sleep?

My mind calls for it. Eyes glance up

to search the inky ceiling for some sign of it split

amongst speckled plaster’s course,

but still no trace amongst its stippled stream.

I dread the anticipated sun’s stream

which combusts the potential of my dark.

I deny, to no one, the run of this night’s course

in fear of every minute passed without sleep

until even my words hum like insomnia split

amongst the rafters, but never reaching up.

...

Once, stuck in an astronomy course

I learned the benefits of looking up,

to see the stars I miss in sleep

that spark, the orbit the zenith’s stream,

so full of dots, only the greatest light shows dark

when the clouds have finally split.

...

...

Junkyard 1-2, Week 2

1. Weather-shaped and ocean-spun
2. Pendulous breath

Improv 5, Week 1

The Roman Bath at Nimes, Henri Cole
Improving list method followed by sudden end-stop plea.

Nibbling your grilled cheese you told me
"write a poem" and as if your pan-fried
bread charred thought you told me
call it "Sex in your Mouth". Forgive me.
This poem is not about sex or the way
your drunk touch felt on the veranda,
but the pity I felt when your eyes pooled
over the expanse of tumbling green beyond us,
looking for a woman that wasn't me.

Improv 4, Week 1

Heat, Denis Johnson
"August, / you're just an erotic hallucination"


At dinner, we gut Spanish over green beans.

This is campamento español and we spend
10 minutes trying to translate the texture 
of pizza cheese (frío? elástico?)
First night our counselor calls us
"gringos" and her laugh chases me
down the soccer field and in salsa
and merengue, while molding churros
in the deep fryer.
     July, you are an exultation of sun.
You are the fervor of porch tea
and homegrown tradition. You are firework.
You are liberty. I have known you since childhood,
pricking my finger on your blackberry brush.
You are blue as fruit, red rubber boots,
you are white, white, white
like the hydrogen awakening of a star's core,
like gringos.
     July, I was born in you
and still I thought if I kicked enough
soccer balls or if I split enough
Spanish verbs, I could be born
someone else for a weekend. 

Improv 3, Week 1

E.E. Cummings "Tulips and Chimneys"
Improv on rhyme scheme (ABCDDCBA)

When we're alone, she says, and threads the straw between her teeth,
we dance like crazy people (here the drum beat ends).
Her lips punctuate the taste of fizz; a new song starts.
I watched, amused. The straw takes up her dance
then fingers lift and twitter out romance
with her cheek's curve, an echo of the hips that dart
against the chair back--and I'm thinking of an Italian well, deep bends
that call the insane to circles and a mythic pedigree.

Improv 2, Week 1

Ozymandias, Percy Bysshe Shelley

"stamped on these lifeless things"

Hot and guarded these people pack
the metro car, lenient on muffled
bags and elbows stamped to backs.
We launch forward and the unanimous sway
of shoulders jostles the siding.

     This is what it feels like to be a body--

a jittery fragment of nerves and stretching
muscles caught in movement.
And like a quick jerk of a leg split
backwards, this is a fracture--the crash
and splatter of a male face to glass,
where the guy whose hand drills
deeper in his cheek, lips pop
hard words and the jagged syllables carve
through the high hum of propulsion.
   
     What is opposite of apparition?

What describes my need to suddenly undo
the press of my presence inches his concave face?
What happens when the boughs weigh
so heavy with the push of petals that the black
cracks, reveals the sinewed light inside?

Improv 1, Week 1

Explaining an Affinity for Bats, A.E. Stallings:
Improv-ing rhyme scheme (ABBA).

I thought I'd die there on those steps
forever refracted in the glossy gleam
and break of change that cast a green
shade to the walls of St. Patrick's well.

Junkyard Quotes 1-2, Week 1

1) These cherries burst like bulbs blown out.

2) We live in rhythm. 

Critical Response 1, Week 1

Response to Sydney Bolding's Improv 2, Week 1:

There's a great deal to admire here sonically, imagistically,like "who found the last of your breaths" or the clever play on your last name "bolding". This also seems to be doing a lot of work with juggling and interconnective tissue--the grandfather's hestiation to write his name coupled with, by end, the speaker's own inability to seize the pen, "paper and pen, unbound". There's also a great sensuality and depth to the grandfather that I would like to see further fleshed out (answer why--why flea markets and women? Why the hesitation?)On another note, in terms of juggling the "you" of the coffin in the beginning, it seems to curiously disappear and, as it stands, function more as a vehicle towards the discovered subject--the grandfather--as opposed to functioning as an additional plate for the poem to perform.