The Pyre

The Writers Place Creative Introductions: Poems of Introduction  and Response to Creative Introductions Seven Blind Mice: Reaction Scribe Notes:  6.15.16 Zoom Notes Reflections on Orlando:  Permission Nicole's Poetry Exercise: My Life as a Fla ir Pen Rankine's  Citizen :  Reading Response Power of Place: Out of Place Shelly's d6 Tables of Creative Creation Exercise: Byron's Vociferous Gun is Unloaded   Casey's TIW Exercise: Write a letter convincing somebody to date you (commitment fear evident) Teacher Inquiry Workshop:  Tired & Haggard (Research Paper)  and  Presentation   Colby's  Some of My Best Friends Are Black :  Reading Response Literary Luncheon:  Offering Poem Inspired by AC Cleaning:  Poem for Rowan Myself  as a . . .  Writer , Reader , Teacher , Learner and Second-Language Learner GKCWP KC Tour: Blue Hil...

I am flying like a green rocket through the air and across the page. I am smooth and matte but bisected, composed of hard plastic and alcohol-soaked felt. I am from a far-away island, bombed and occupied and then reconstructed. I am forgotten in the bottom of bags and wedged under car mats but nowhere to be found. I am lush yet practical and cathartic, birthing irregular circles that sprawl across whitespace, delivering well-intentioned commentary on nascent thoughts, bearing stream of consciousness upon the page before sleep.

The cottonwood seeds my daughter says make our cul de sac liminal gather around the outside of our air conditioner. Like a cocoon, the puffs of fluff congregate on the metal webbing, converging into a solid layer. I unwind the green hose, fighting against its kinks and untying its knots, until water spurts from the nozzle. The white cocoon softens in the deluge, graying as the dirt melts into the fibers, and then breaks into continents. Each continent floats downward, toward the leaf-crusted concrete; some tiny islands loiter at the metal crossroads. I press my thumb harder into the nozzle, forcing the water to coax the remaining islands out and down. A halo around the machine, what was once the fluff that revealed the faerie circle hidden in our cul de sac splayed out, drowned.

“Accept what people offer. Drink their milkshakes. Take their love.” Wally Lamb But what I was really asking: “Daughter, even though you are 20 now and even though you have your own house and even though you pay your own bills, do I still have something to offer you ?” When my mother had nothing to offer my brother and me, my grandma offered to raise us. I picture her making this offer clad in her red apron with black piping and grease stains, standing in front of the stove. She offered herself every night at the kitchen table, the same one in my dining room today. She offered herself up in too-sweet tea. She offered herself up in green beans with butter and bacon. She offered herself up in the double breading on the fried chicken. She offered herself up in the warmed-up can of Spaghettios in front of my brother, who was too picky to accept her other offerings. She offered so much of herself up that we never left the kitchen table hungry. But what I read: “Yes, mom, I stil...

I’ve found my place in being out of place. Of course, being out of place didn’t feel like my place at first. At first, being out of place made me feel just displaced. My freckles made me out place in the sea of white, unblemished skin around me. Despite the wrinkles, even my teacher’s skin was uniform and spotless. Even my teacher, the only one in the room who loved reading as much as I did, was separate from me in this way.  Her unmarred hands displayed a book and its title dropped from her mouth: Freckle Juice by Judy Blume. I felt my own language betray me as the student next to me pointed and declared, “It’s about you!”. I dissolved into my desk and chair until I was sure the only evidence of me was my spots. I was sure I was gone until the next time the word “freckle” exploded out of my teacher’s mouth and another student contorted around to gawk and taunt. I was sure that the next student to turn would be astonished to discover my desk empty, but adorned with a pecu...

Yesterday, I granted permission to the tears. I allowed them to well up and over the ledges of my eyes and pool where my cheek and sunglasses met as I commuted. I allowed them to collect there, even granting just a couple passage down my chin and my neck for two long minutes. In those two long minutes, I blocked out the sight of other cars, the drivers who might see my vulnerability, my humanity. In those two long minutes, the soothing voice on the radio introduced me to a man whose friend Omar sheltered him when nobody else--not even his parents--would. Omar was killed by Omar, and both had a mother and father. The day of, I refused to grant permission to my tears, instead batting them away with vigorous blinking and choking them down with considerable will. I read only half articles and spoke in only fragmented conversations because I could not bear to confront my own vulnerability, my own humanity. Today, my tears granted my body permission to sob--a deep wracking sob--the ...

My Initial Reaction to Writing a Poem of Introduction Is this sufficient? activist socialist anti-conformist humanist unionist populist feminist pacifist atheist liberalist existentialist absurdist No?   You want something more-- more personal, you say? Myers Briggs: Introversion, Intuition, Feeling, Perception StrengthsFinder: Input, Intellection, Learner, Achiever, Focus True Colors: Green, Orange, Blue, Gold Still not enough? Something more-- something beyond labels, you say? Be patient: look, listen, and then maybe you’ll see. Then The Typical “Where I’m From” Poem of Introduction I am from a dog-shaped cookie jar, from Nintendo Track and Field and sardines in mustard sauce. I am from Main Street, Olive Street, Labette Terrace, Ash Street (and don’t forget Main Street again). I am from sauerkraut and silence, from hard dumplings and game nights. I am from Uncle Charlie perched on a motorbike and Grandma Vivia...

The anemic gray bubbles nibble at my edges encased in the white acrylic bathtub. They nibble at the tension, caress the tissue, unfurl the fibers. They weigh down my eyelids and I go blank until I see black. I'm floating-- gray bubbles fade to celestial bodies, warm water evaporates in a vacuum of air. I sense the tethers once securing me: lines stretched to the North, South, East, West, ropes pulled thin by eager independence, strings snapped in all arrays, Each snap tugged me to the left, right, front, back: an inch, a centimeter, a millimeter, rocking me with a maternal rhythm. My eyes, fixed to the distance, focused on some ethereal destination, only wavered after decades of snaps. The strange weight of the final tethers, only two, extend to the East and West. The lines tauten and the fibers elongate until one snaps. And I am a planet spinning off its axis defying the laws of nature-- but not the law of the last tether. The last line gi...