Snippets (with a nod to C.D. Wright)

In another universe, I might would be the ankle-sprained member of a women's Olympic gymnastics team. The spirited stunter with a heart of gold, enthusiasm to spare, who would see her team to victory had she not torn her ACL dancing the Cupid Shuffle in the locker room shower. Out of the way already, toots. So close, but still no gold.

When I was seventeen, all I wanted to be was Winona Ryder's character in Mermaids. Charlotte, the confused, slightly macabre, too-smart-for-her-own-good teenager whose life is drastically changed for the better after she loses her virginity to the handyman in the belfry of the convent next door. I wanted to scream out the window of a stolen car, "I want to live a violently exciting life!"

A violently exciting life is not something one can plan. I'm young and naive and a pretty bad poet, but I've learned at least that much from living the life of a Compulsive Rehearser.

Sometimes, when I'm rehearsing aloud to myself, I answer back in different voices. You think I'm not as crazy when I do that.

You think I'm more crazy when I admit that I've lied extensively about the number of people I've slept with. Or perhaps you'll think lying about sex is the curse of youth. Either way, I'm a liar and you still like me.

If this were Mississippi and over there was the Mississippi River, the humidity would uppercut us, leave us gasping. Instead it's a beautiful day in East Tennessee, cloudy, 65 degrees. A change could make me cry.

I'm not the weepy type, but were I, I'd cry in front of you. Only so you'd pet me. Instead I write and bebop and lie in catatonic states. I'm pretty busy.


*I've been trying to mimic C. D. Wright's poem, but all I can get down is tone, not style. Yesterday a friend told me I should write prose more, and though I've never envisioned myself as a prose writer, I gave it a shot with my "Snippets." Maybe, if I can muster the craftsmanship, I can go back in and make my paragraphs ghazals. Then Galway Kinnell would love me.

Charlotte told me C.D. Wright is kind of a bitch

But I love this poem, the idea behind it, that it's driven by personal disclosures. I'm going to write the Tim version of this poem, and I'm going to disclose odd things, true things, entirely too many things. Just to see what happens. Watch out, y'all.

Personals
C.D. Wright

Some nights I sleep with my dress on. My teeth

are small and even. I don't get headaches.

Since 1971 or before, I have hunted a bench

where I could eat my pimento cheese in peace.

If this were Tennessee and across that river, Arkansas,

I'd meet you in West Memphis tonight. We could

have a big time. Danger, shoulder soft.

Do not lie or lean on me. I'm still trying to find a job

for which a simple machine isn't better suited.

I've seen people die of money. Look at Admiral Benbow. I wish

like certain fishes, we came equipped with light organs.

Which reminds me of a little known fact:

if we were going the speed of light, this dome

would be shrinking while we were gaining weight.

Isn't the road crooked and steep.

In this humidity, I make repairs by night. I'm not one

among millions who saw Monroe's face

in the moon. I go blank looking at that face.

If I could afford it I'd live in hotels. I won awards

in spelling and the Australian crawl. Long long ago.

Grandmother married a man named Ivan. The men called him

Eve. Stranger, to tell the truth, in dog years I am up there.