First Glimpses- 11/4/12

They suctioned you out with a hoover and gutted me like a fish

Like a cored apple or the yolk of a hard boiled egg.



Pushmepullme, pushmepullme. Push was me, pulled was you.



And after an hour and half of empty-husk progress promises I clung to like a life-raft,



And a burst of fuschial, nuchal color,



I saw you sail by, grey and splotchy and strangely long,



The unidentified flying baby,



Unmoving, uncrying, unconscious baby.



Not pink, not screaming.



Your father spoke to you and something deep inside you recognized his voice

And you cried and I breathed again.



Hands carried you to me for inspection like a factory shirt they put those stickers on,



“Inspected by #9.”



And I looked into the sapphire dragon’s jewels you had for eyes and you looked back and I sang



to you.

Comments

  1. JillNovember 10, 2012 at 3:49 PM

    There are so many beautiful things in this. "And you cried and I breathed again." I love how this line comes in. Beautiful.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Proudly Rejected by Calyx Journal.

Image
Two rejections in one week? Sigh. CALYX (A journal of Art and Literature by Women) sent me a very polite form letter today rejecting four of my poems. They wrote, "We appreciate the opportunity to review your submission and consider it for publication. At least two editors have read your work and found that we are unable to use your submission in the Journal. We apologize for replying with a form letter, but the volume of submissions no longer allows us the luxury of a personal reponse." I thought it was worded particularly well, and the editor actually wrote my first name on the top in real pen and signed the bottom. That's unique. I've never recieved a rejection letter where they signed it with real pen. So, Calyx Journal- I rate you FOUR STARS for class. Here is one of the poems they rejected. Maybe it's not subtle enough. I'm not very good at subtlety yet. Chrysalis A butterfly can’t return to her chrysalis No matter how fast the outside winds blow, No ma...
Read more

"Back to School" Proudly published by the Kern Valley Sun

Image
This week I had four different students tell me that they thought I was a "cool," "popular" teacher. Obviously, I have never shown them the above picture of myself. As you can see, I am one classy lady. I am a complete geek. Unfortunately, it's not in that, "I'm a geek, and I started my own multi-million dollar computer company" way that's really popular right now. I also wasn't a geek in the "I have poor hygiene, and other students throw their lunches at me" sort of way, thank goodness. I was the kind of geek who didn't watch R-Rated movies, looked a lot like Velma from Scooby Doo (I still do, in fact), really liked hanging out with their parents, was shocked by cussing, read 19th century novels for fun, spoke like a walking dictionary, and who teachers always really liked. Ergo, I became an English teacher. When I got to college, I learned that all of the above traits were actually strengths, which was a relief. Do the kids ...
Read more

Sure I'm trailer-trash- Do you have a problem with that?

Image
One of the hardest questions that has plagued my writing has simply been, "What do I write about?" I have often heard the advice, "Write about what you know." Well, when I started writing and really putting my mind to it, I was only twenty-one. Basically, all I knew was high school, college, and a few European countries I'd visited during college. I didn't have very much to say for myself. I made myself write anyway with some good results, but nothing really stellar. Starting this blog last year gave me an excellent lab to bounce my ideas off of readers. By far my most popular peices have been about the wacky situations I manage to get myself into. I'm not a stupid person, but sometimes....I do some very silly things. Anyway, I'm twenty-seven now and the past six years have helped me come up with some new ideas that I think will be very successful. My husband and I have been building our own home and living in a 30 foot trailer in my in-law's fr...
Read more