Narrow Rooms

(this is an imitation of Mary Jo Salter. I was given the idea by her poem "Goodbye, Train")

I'm standing in a narrow room
packed with adolescents or college-age
kids, arms-crossed, T-shirt-wearing,

staring at the stage like animals
restrained. But when the band comes on
there are no leashes or cages left.

There are open-mouthed snarls, hackles raised,
but not at each other. We are all angry
at the same thing. We all have our reasons.

The narrow room turns into a river overrun
by frothy, heaving rapids.
The kids who get caught up collide

and push off again, hands on on backs
or shoulderblades. Some of them are carried
to the front of the room and collect there,

a small, frantic mass that steadily loses
its constituents to the current. But more arrive,
flung over top in absurd and reckless flight,

held aloft and then borne groundward.
This is not the time to hunker down.
This is the time to stick out my neck

for someone else's knees to clamber on.
(I'll support them on my shoulders.)
I will be one of them. The singer comes down

from the stage. He, too, is caught up.
This is the point. The bars and barriers
are washed away. We are all bruised

from collisions with hands and elbows.
We are all sweatier than we've ever been.
We will all lose our voices from yelling so loud.

I think about how lucky I am to be eighteen,
angry and battered by rapids, instead of silenced
and subject to the gentle predictability of the tides.

to my friends

1.
sometimes i forget you don't like hearing the new slang
and sometimes paint doesn't come out of the walls.
so when you point your finger at me and say "bang"
i'll twist and grab my heart and i'll take my fall.
and yes, i'll stop showing you rugged-looking men.
as long as i don't have to watch "telephone" again.

2.
i don't get it either.
i don't forget it either.
i don't do stupid shit to myself anymore.
i don't sit on my hands or stand in the back.
this is about working at it.
this is about how nothing must go and
we can hold it all up. but only if we work at it.

3.
one day we're gonna go shove some dudes around
and yell a lot and get real sweaty and it's gonna rule.

June Morning (Wallace Stevens imitation)

1.
Your veil darkened by rain, the steady
Tap-tapping on the tent-top overhead, and the
Teeth bleached to blind all conspire to
Wall me in and leave me there. I smile and
Lift your hands, imagining for a second
How hard I could squeeze them before
Your white teeth disappeared in an
Ungainly yell, and you searched my eyes,
Darkened by rain, looking for reason.
I spend hours alone and find no reason.
Instead I make small sacrifices to
My anger, the mangy, restless, atrophied thing
That I have walled in and left there.
The scratch marks have long since faded
Like raindrop-stains on gray linen suits.

2.
Sitting at the kitchen table, I hear a howl
Echoing in its small chamber: "There is no
Reason for you to find. I pad decrepit in the
Bottom of your throat and you feel like growling."
I built this house and now I live in it,
Gritting my teeth at arguments and burned eggs,
Feeling disgust when my children smile at me,
Bored to death before you even open your mouth.
Outside thunder rolls and sickly trails of rainwater
Lurch down the plate-glass doors. In the garden
The soil grows darker in the rain, while earthworms
Convulse in the grass to escape drowning.
My children want to go out and play, but
I growl at them and make them stay inside.

"Out, Out-" by Robert Frost

(This is the poem I analyzed for my last paper.)

The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard
And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,
Sweet-scented stuff when the breeze drew across it.
And from there those that lifted eyes could count
Five mountain ranges one behing the other
Under the sunset far into Vermont.
And the saw snarled and rattled, snarled and rattled,
As it ran light, or had to bear a load.
And nothing happened: day was all but done.
Call it a day, I wish they might have said
To please the boy by giving him the half hour
That a boy counts so much when saved from work.
His sister stood beside him in her apron
To tell them "Supper." At the word, the saw,
As if it meant to prove saws know what supper meant,
Leaped out at the boy's hand, or seemed to leap -
He must have given the hand. However it was,
Neither refused the meeting. But the hand!
The boy's first outcry was a rueful laugh,
As he swung toward them holding up the hand
Half in appeal, but half as if to keep
The life from spilling. Then the boy saw all -
Since he was old enough to know, big boy
Doing a man's work, though a child at heart -
He saw all was spoiled. "Don't let him cut my hand off -
The doctor, when he comes. Don't let him, sister!"
So. The hand was gone already.
The doctor put him in the dark of ether.
He lay and puffed his lips out with his breath.
And then - the watcher at his pulse took a fright.
No one believed. They listened to his heart.
Little - less - nothing! - and that ended it.
No more to build on there. And they, since they
Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.

out of time

when give and take turns into
sequined lamé letters tumbling
haphazardly down onto my head
i recoil and settle in my burrow
where boys cut off their hands
with buzz saws because at least
i can understand why that happens

nothing I write ever makes me feel like this makes me feel

"Disease"
by Conor Meehan

When it happened, I didn’t understand why.
She’d been perfectly healthy yesterday.
Now there were all sorts of appointments and
doctors, and I didn’t want to be bothered.
I was just a kid on my summer break.
But at the same time this was my mother⎯
The woman who had given me my life.
She did not want me to be affected
By it, but how could I not be? I had
To stand there and lie; tell her I was fine.
I wasn’t. The fear of losing my mother
Ate at my insides. I hid it on the
Outside and put a smile on my face.
I guess I was trying to shield myself
From the pain. But there were times I wondered
If I really cared. I had to have cared,
Right? What kind of a son would I have been?
I went on living amidst everything
Even though I knew what was at stake. Would
I cry at the funeral or keep smiling?

Amnesiac

(this week we imitate Langston Hughes)

I felt the electricity run from my limbs
And opened my eyes.
I heard some kind of sorrowful hymn
Right by my side.
It came from a woman looking all drawn and grim,
Clutching a crumpled handkerchief to her thigh.

She sang, "My very own amnesiac.
Your daddy, he won't be coming back.
I miss him like I miss you
When you wake up someone new,
My very own, my very own amnesiac."

I got the breath to ask her "What is this place,
And why are we here?"
No vestige of feeling showed on her face
But for one or two tears.
She said "Baby, I'll love you to the end of my days.
It hurts me so much but I promise I'll stay.
I'll always be near."

Then she held my hand and stroked my hair,
While I tried and tried as hard as I could
But still couldn't remember when I'd met her, or where,
Though I knew that I should —

I felt the electricity run from my limbs
And opened my eyes.
I heard some kind of sorrowful hymn
Right by my side.
It came from a woman looking all drawn and grim,
Clutching a crumpled handkerchief to her thigh.

She sang, "My very own amnesiac.
Your daddy, he won't be coming back.
So I'm stuck here all alone,
Just me and his ghost,
'Cause my baby can't remember his family or his home,
My very own, oh, my very own,
My very own amnesiac."