Dorm Room - Poem

Keyboard burns,
scattered carpet coins,
and books
but
no time.

Leftover books
literary classics,
and self-satisfaction
but
no space.

A mug - fifteen years old
covered with soot
in memoriam of
grandparents

Old guitars with
dusty headstocks
that are
so distracting

Fake mustaches
and a 
paper bouquet
scattered randomly

More pennies
guitar picks and
white sticky tac,
translucent pills/
old pocket notebooks

Tousled papers
and blankets
work and sleep
and
stale laundry

The Drowning Man

i'm sorry officer

i was nine in the summer
of a wide glassy lake
in the wilderness of childhood
and a floating dock
trembling over the waves, slowly coughing
water-logged
stretching my arms like a plastic bag
a broken windmill
the sun spears the crests
and the back of a burnt-skinned hero
a tumor with toes
curled in the wood of buoyancy
i grip the edge of a watery cliff
until dripping flesh
throws itself against my face-struck

and i drowned.

and that is why I
am sitting here with
my arms in the bathtub
strangling my daughter

A College Dorm Room

The keyboard is burning under my hands as I stare at the screen. There are scattered coins on the carpet that I haven't bothered to pick up, and books everywhere that I won't read because I'll tell myself that I don't have time. There are two cups sitting at the top on my desk shelf that I received as gifts. The first one is a hand-spun ceramic with a navy blue glaze and I can make out the mottled reflection of the room in its shine. The second mug is a memento from my grandparents that is fifteen years old - There's a photograph melted on it of both of them. My grandfather died almost eight years ago. I keep it even though it's old and is still covered in the residue of soot from the fire that I can't scrub away no matter how hard I try.  Also on the top shelf are books left over from last semester - anthologies of literature, the complete works of John Milton, Jane Eyre; they remain as a kind of self-satisfaction for my intellectual ego. To my left is a bookcase that tells me I really should stop buying books because I no longer have a place to put them. Resting on the desk to my right is an old guitar that doesn't belong to me. The headstock is dusty and I still don't recognize the brand, but it sits there as a consistent distraction. Spread out over the desk are old receipts and lightly used textbooks, among other random things - like the mildly sardonic box of fake mustaches that were in the mail as a birthday present, or the homemade paper flowers with the light green print given in congratulations after one of my theater performances. Pennies, nail clippers, white sticky-tac, guitar picks, old pocket notebooks, and the foil and plastic pods of cold medicine also find their place. The walls that surround me are freshly painted and utterly blank, but the carpet itself is littered with worn pairs of jeans and stale laundry. My bed is covered with a tousled mess of blankets, remaining the most inviting thing in the room. Laying behind me are a stack of scattered papers that must have fallen off of the bed and they stretch out across the floor in reminder of all of the homework that needs to be written, revised, and completed.

Poem Reflections

For the Witch of the Pine Barrens piece, I obviously really wanted to focus on the woman herself, Peggy Clevenger. To me, that name rolls off the tongue with a mixture of delight and intrigue, like there's something darker beyond the name that we are unaware. Because of this, I fashioned my poem that kept rhythmically coming back to that repetition in those short couplets, for I found that was the only way I could give the poem any sense of resolve. In that way, I tried to let the poem drift away a little bit with its longer stanzas, but I knew that Peggy was the framing device that it would always come back too, which helped in the poem's construction quite a bit. Outside of that indicator, I don't have a good personal sense of what works and what doesn't as a poet, but for the most part I was able to structure it in a way that was satisfying for me. 

My process for shaping the second Pine Barrens excerpt was mostly concerned with paring down the words and fitting them in any sort of order that sounded pleasing to me. In other words, there wasn't really a particular shape that I was aiming for, but there were a few things from the original excerpt that I wanted to highlight. In the passage, there's a certain vision of small town industrialization that I wanted to bring out, because I feel like the original piece was supposed to champion small-town values. That would still be true of the new piece, but I wanted to focus more on the actual process of this small-factory operation among the blueberry bushes rather than its people, which is part of the reason why I cut all descriptors to the network of family working inside. Other than that, there wasn't really thickly layered reasoning that went into the shape of the poem; I simply typed out words of fancy from the excerpt that struck me in the way that they came out. 

The Pine Barrens: Part Two

Second excerpt from the Pine Barrens -

ver. 1:

We had come to a clearing
Where thousands
Of blueberry bushes grew.
In the center of it was
The packing house
-A small low building
With open and screenless windows
On all sides
In front of it was
A school bus marked
"Farm Labor Transport."

The driver stood beside his bus.
He was a tall and amiable looking man
With bare feet.
He wore green trousers and a T-shirt

The end of the working day had come
Pickers were swarming around a pump
Old women, middle aged men,
A young girl

A line was waiting
To use an outhouse
Near the pump

Inside the packing house
Berries half an inch thick
Were rolling up a portable conveyor belt
And eventually into pint boxes

Charlie's sister was
Packing the boxes
Charlie's daughter-in-law
Was putting cellophane over them
And Charlie's son Jim was
Supervising the operation

Charlie picked up a pint box
In which berries were mounded high
He told me with disgust that some
Supermarket chains knock off
These mounds
And put them in new boxes
Getting three of four extra pints
Per twelve-box tray

At one window, pickers were turning
In tickets of various colors
And they were given cash in return
One picker, who appeared
To be at least in his sixties,
Tapped Charlie on the arm
And showed him a thick pack of tickets held
Together with a rubber band

"I found these," the man said
"They must have fallen
Out of your son's pocket."
He gave the packet to Charlie
Who thanked him and counted the tickets

Charlie said, "These tickets
Are worth seventy-five dollars."

ver 2.

In the center
Of thousands of blueberries
Was the packing house

In front of it, a school bus
Marked "Farm Labor Transport

Beside the bus
Stood the driver - tall and amiable
With bare feet and green trousers and a T-shirt

The end of the working day
Had come.
Pickers were swarming

Old women,
Middle-aged men,
A young girl
Around the pump

A line was waiting
To use an outhouse nearby

Inside, berries half an inch thick
Were rolling up a portable conveyor belt
All the way into pint boxes

Boxes being packed and
Wrapped with cellophane
And supervised

Charlie picked up a pint box
In which berries were mounded high
Some supermarket chains
Knock off these mounds
And put them in new boxes
Getting three or four extra pints
Per twelve-box tray
He told me with disgust

Pickers turned in tickets of various colors
And then they were given cash in return

A picker at least in his sixties
Tapped Charlie on the arm and showed him
A thick packet of tickets held
With a rubber band.

The man said he found them.
Fallen from your son's pocket,
He said.

He gave the packet to Charlie
Who thanked him and counted the tickets
Worth all of seventy-five dollars

The Witch of the Pine Barrens

[taken from The Pine Barrens by John McPhee]

ver. 1:

The Pine Barrens once had their own particular witch
Pineys put salt over their doors to discourage visits
From the witch of the Pines, Peggy Clevenger
It was known she could turn herself into a rabbit, 

For a dog was once seen chasing a rabbit

And the rabbit jumped

Through the window of a house, 

And there - in the same instant

In the window - stood Peggy Clevenger

On another occasion, a man saw a lizard
And tried to kill it with a large rock
When the rock hit the lizard, the lizard disappeared
And Peggy Clevenger materialized on the spot
And smacked the man in the face

Clevenger is a Hessian name

Peggy lived in Pasadena

Another of the now vanished towns
Five miles east of Mt. Misery
It was said she had a stocking full of gold

Her remains were found one morning

In the smoking ruins of her cabin, but

There was no trace of the gold.

ver. 2: 

The Witch of the Pines

Pineys put salt over their door to discourage visits
from the witch of the pines - Peggy Clevenger

It was known 

she could turn into a rabbit

For a dog 

was once seen chasing a rabbit

and the rabbit jumped through the window of a house

There in the same instant in the window

Stood the form of one Peggy Clevenger

Again, a man saw a lizard to kill
Crushing it with a large rock

The rock hit the lizard and the lizard disappeared

There on the spot to smack the man in the face
Stood Peggy, the Hessian Clevenger

In Pasadena, another
Of the now vanished towns

It was said Peggy
Had a stocking full of gold

In the ruins of the cabin there was no trace of the gold
Only the remains of the witch, Peggy Clevenger

Taxonomy

Planted twixt the natures;
The peat and barks of obscurity
Mystery abounds, with unreadable stories
O! to be literate - overcome
Fixtures of compulsion, but no directive,
Untouched, darkened volumes.
Flowering pistils yearn for Eve
And her poetic communion.
I am a babbling giant,
Trampling the undergrowth
In the name of spiritual quiets.
The depths of the pines are covered over
And branches unfocused, denying ownership.
A powerful enigma, undesirous to be broken, for
God does not dwell in the name

The Poesy of Nature

a man in the midst of the desert
carefully bending lines in the sand
bereft of wind or rain--stagnant heat
no elemental coax, but within