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.