Round 2 from Prague

Death shakes his hourglass at noon.
The cobblestone maze sways with accents.

I lose direction.
Lightning threads the sky,

a sea of marionettes float in slow motion.
Hollow limbs rooted to tiny strings

and those heavy sleeping heads
condemned to a smile or frown.

Voices wash over,
words I will never understand.

An anonymous love swells and empties
for everything I do not know.

A string tugs memory, wrist.
My story keeps me treading the same air.

Round 1, Revisited

Variations on Source

to move backward in time
that slow motion unbraiding un-
doing of threads and language

receding toward mother and beyond mother
seed return to cloud, cloud return to ocean
the ocean collapses into gradients of song

to search it blindly in the earth
where sight is a downward push
toward the question of water

the numbers fall off the clock
and become a trail of footsteps in the desert

I read all my books backward
until there is only salt in my mouth

I wake up and find
the origin is not where I left it

Let's Discuss!

Hey there!

Now that we've posted I figured I'd go ahead and post this for us to discuss in.

I'm hoping that I'll hear back from Jennifer soon, until then, let's see what we have to say so far!

Round 2: Where I'm Coming From--Andrea England

I remember the story of a woman in
pain. A CAT scan was done. The isle harboring teeth
found floating under her ribs belonged to her twin.
The teeth grew, were benign tumors, became devils
on one shoulder and angels on the other. She
had heard of such happenings; she was a nurse and
knew how a weaker body will recede toward
another and set up house. I remember the
story of myself. My mother called me daughter,
the survivor, while strangers in the grocery isles
said, what a beautiful son you have. I could not be
both, but when I had pain a CAT scan was done and
all tests came back negative, a healthy woman at
thirty-five, no teeth staring from the roadside, each
heartbeat, each thumbprint its own constellation.

Round 2: Growing

Growing - Eileen Wiedbrauk

Froggy constellations buried low in the earth
moss growing shape to their toes, faces
aired in the world above

they pull free, reach up
grow heavenward
without me,

climbing earth and treetops,
the hours of sand and air
pose them no impediment.

Beneath, in the hollow
where they lay for years
cradled, cherished by someone,

now gapes and throbs
with their absence,
their escape heavenward.

Round 2 Poem

Memories Rooted in Pain Are the Strongest

When I found myself looking for something to fill
the hole you left (the physics of filling, sand rolling
back into the holes we made), sorting through what
you left, the tiny Russian box filled with my baby
teeth, each one an envelope, each memory sewn into
the wood and bone, your needle and thread in cushions
shaped like Chinese acrobats, I wonder. Do you know
I went to China after you died? I saw you in the birds
that sifted the sand for seeds, they said it was good luck.
Do you know that I was sick a year after? The foreign
taxi-driver said it was a sign that you were thinking of me.
I choked at his superstition. But always, I return to the hour-
glass shaped pedestal, twisted white wicker, casting
a thicket of shadows on the thinly carpeted floor,
that held the weight of too many flowers at your funeral.

Where I'm Coming From-- Andrea England

One vitamin and a cup of coffee,
this nutriment of sustenance, this source
or morpheme. Here, the tooth my neighbor pulled
loose at six years old, the chord of my cries
for such a tiny loss, the pit a small pothole,
my tongue’s fixation before its affinity
for other mouths, ideas, this lira,
that cross between barbs. It was easier
then standing upright, feet planted, reverse
handstand, when I believed my right arm East,
my left an extension of West, the room
I was born in, womb I was sown into,
strange extirpation, not the sand’s struggle
to hold down anchor. Or is it fortune,
first limit, first compass, this single cup?

Round 1: Roots

Roots - Eileen Wiedbrauk

How old was I when they pulled the first one? Old enough to know that teeth are teeth. That when they fall out they look precisely as they did before only with now bloody red socket. So when they handed me the tiny plastic treasure chest—neon orange, I didn’t choose the color—what laid inside was a monstrosity, a malfunction: a tooth as teeth should be with long spiky point sent to kill me. There were more—each with spike, each boxed and returned to me. That was the pain, they said, why these teeth hurt more than the others. The ones that I joyfully wiggled with my fingers and worried with my tongue. Toying with them just enough to ache but not enough to hurt. Teeth that I would have gladly gone on tapping and poking until they fell out in a bite of beef; instead my mother dragged me before my father, told me to hold still, put his fingers in my mouth, pulled until the tooth gave with a pop of pain. I preferred the dentists with pliers and needles—the brutal pinch of numbing agent inserted into the gum—to fingers. At least these people, these strangers, I did not trust, did not care for. When they removed teeth, it hurt because it was before its time, that people, that teeth, aren’t supposed to leave until there’s nothing left to hold them to the place they’ve come from.

Untitled

Untitled - Shana Wolstein

Today, the poppies have sprung—shoots of pale green
from near-black dirt: the exuberant hair of some
silently sleeping head in the soil. And soon, they will each
sprout faces. Each green blade, the stem of a thought that
will blossom, spinning out like galaxies. Each petal containing
its own leg of stars, planets, at each center, the pull back
to ground. Once, we tilled in Spring and unearthed a sleeping
frog—unearthed him inside-out. His fat belly
flayed, a bar of dirt crossing where his froggy hips
should have been. But my memory paints the picture more
sterile now, funny. His glistening jewel-like organs, amidst
a nest of veins that looked like they would reach back into
the ground, he would draw new life from the earth. Maybe
I was an evil child, I poked his torso with a stick—
the barely rooted leg shot out, fighting against hibernation and death.

Getting Started!

First, I wanted to thank everyone for our lovely evening meeting over at Water St. tonight. It's really invigorating to hear everybody's poems and thoughts after so much preparation getting to this point.

I'm going to post the poem I read tonight soon and I hope you all will follow suit!

Just a reminder, we decided that our next poem should be up by around June 25 and our discussion of those poems should be up by July 2.

If you have any questions about the blog or dates/etc, I guess it would be best to post your comment to this post.

Thanks!
-Shana