Sexying it up

I don't write too much sexy stuff, but I think I'm going to start churning out some more, just to see what happens. For a while there, I was throwing God around in my poems, really for no other reason than to see what weight she could bring. She did wonders for some and befuddled a few, kind of like how the whole God mythos plays out in real life. I figured I'd give her a rest with all the earthquakes in China and the Democratic race.

Let's see what happens when I throw sex--particularly penetration--around. Let me know what you think, and feel free to suggest line edits, a new title, online dating, or deep spiritual guidance.

The Osmosis of Desire

My body contains many stories,
A refrigerated trailer truckload of mythos.
The language of my body
Sung out in eruptions,
Gastric juices,
Chemical reactions,
Pit sweat and heart palpitations.
I do not write new myths of longing.
I am not the first to want things I don't have
But I admit to it,
The osmosis of desire,
Longing at the molecular level.

This is what I talk about when I talk about love:
Parts of you in me,
Plasma united, cell walls suctioned,
A strand of your hair in my mouth.
I bathed with a lover's soap weeks after he'd gone,
Switched to his cologne,
Hoping pieces of his body would be sucked up by mine.
Oh, penetration.

Now, you,
I love your sleek jawline and understated laugh,
Like bluebird wing flaps.
I can make you smile,
Make the muscles in your face maneuver beneath your skin
Inside you, a piece of me,
My wit, desire down past the tissues,
Soaked through the skull.
Me shot through your brain.
Deeply, I affect you.

Strange Little Girls

I missed a day in Monda's challenge, which means that I have failed, but at least I ain't a quitter. Today I share with you something I've been collecting over the past few weeks. I call them my "strange little girls," these paintings and artistic renderings of, well, strange little girls. If you feel so inspired to write about one, please share with me. Or just give 'em a gander and wonder what it is in my personality that attracts me to such art (and write about that!)








And one of my favorite strange little girl poems, by a woman poet who, after I met her thought, "what a strange older lady."

The One Girl at the Boy's Party

When I take my girl to the swimming party

I set her down among the boys. They tower and

bristle, she stands there smooth and sleek,

her math scores unfolding in the air around her.

They will strip to their suits, her body hard and

indivisible as a prime number,

they'll plunge in the deep end, she'll subtract

her height from ten feet, divide it into

hundreds of gallons of water, the numbers

bouncing in her mind like molecules of chlorine

in the bright blue pool. When they climb out,

her ponytail will hang its pencil lead

down her back, her narrow silk suit

with hamburgers and french fries printed on it

will glisten in the brilliant air, and they will

see her sweet face, solemn and

sealed, a factor of one, and she will

see their eyes, two each,

their legs, two each, and the curves of their sexes,

one each, and in her head she'll be doing her

sparkle and fall to the power of a thousand from her body.

Sharon Olds

P.S. Tomorrow I plan to be back in full swing with a post of my own work, or at least some ruminations about disc golf, laying out by the pool, or the trip to the therapist's office.

Gusty Winds and A Tennessee Saturday Night

It's chilly and rainy and oh-so-windy today in East Tennessee. So, I'm mopey, because I've been watching Sex and the City and Pretty In Pink allday, wondering where is my Big, where is my Andrew McCarthy (though, truth be told, I'd rather have a Duckie, cuz I love few things more than a man who ain't afraid to dance). Therefore, in lieu of embarrassing myself by posting the self-pitying poem I'm brooding over, I'll share some highlights from the White Trash Bash last night.

The riffraff I hang around with
(notice the underwear on the clothesline strung across the porch)


Rocky Top will always be home sweet home to me
("and I leave my Christmas lights on on my front porch all year long")


What's better: the doo rag, the boat paddle, or the trash 'stache?


Our only casualty of the night, but what a great photo op!

Look, if you're thinking I should not relish in such an inappropriately themed party, I say to you stop taking yourself so seriously. It's summer. We're young. And it's a hell of a lot easier being trashy.

Trash Rises

Okay, I admit it. The summer so far is wonderful. Lazy days spent with my pen to the page, nose in a book, or butt in the kitchen (my three favorite alone activities) sprawl into late nights dancing ecstatically at holes-in-the wall or on front porches in Fort Sanders. It's all I dreamed it would be back in late March, when I. Just. Couldn't. Take. It. Anymore. Tonight I'm attending a "White Trash Bash," where I will wear a sleeveless, stained Boomsday t-shirt from 2000, denim cut-offs, and a "Preferred Insulation and Fireplaces" ball cap while swilling cheap beer and grooving to some R.E.O. Speedwagon. And Confederate Railroad, since I like my women just a little on the trashy side.

In honor of the trash-tacular events planned, I share with you a (shitty) first draft of a poem that might be a little creepy, but shouldn't raise any concerns. Unless of course those concerns are about the quality of writing, in which case, please share your constructive criticism.

“Lovely Boy with Sleeve of Tattoos”

You are not the rebel

You want to be.

You are rebel enough for me.

Oh, trick-jumper,

Bicycler,

Why do you buy your mushrooms and weed?

Things don’t make you eccentric but

Ideas, boy,

Notions of love,

Untenable actions of your taught, lean frame.

You are more vulnerable than

You think you are

You are vulnerable enough for me.

Sparrow tattooed,

Pocked pore face,

Come.

We can explore eccentricity.

P.S.-- Don't you think "On Front Porches in Fort Sanders" would be a great title for a poem?

NaFloScribMo 1

God bless Monda for giving me a reason to write. Here I was thinking of shutting the ol' bookspaz down in pursuit of lower, more pysically harmful endeavors. Let's do this.

Last time Jeffrey called, he sounded better, told me he put in for a transfer to Tupelo. "I'll be just right there," he said, of the town a hundred miles east of where we grew up. He has lived off for a while--first Lexington, now Pensacola--away from the steep bluffs of our hometown overlooking the Mississippi Delta, for five years now. He hasn't adjusted well.

I left home before he did, by 34 days. My exodus was different, though. I am always doing it differently from him. He left to drive an in-town courier van for FedEx; I left for college, with its mid-semester reprieves, fall break, spring break, not to mention Christmas and summer when I've had all the time in the world to do go back home as much as I want. As much as he wants to but can't with these gas prices and those 12-hour days. I adjusted to life away better than he did.

But was I ever really away? Not longer than a couple months. Not gone a full year before I got back to DeSoto County's sweetest water, Muffy's cocksure golden rooster. I keep trying to grow up, to say each August, "No, I will not go back until Christmas." But I can't stop going, especially when I really want to. I've never been any good at not doing what I want precisely when I want to do it. My brother has.

Jeffrey is stoic and brave--at least logical. Him with his work-a-day common sense, too much like our father, sacrificing himself for his job because if it doesn't give him purpose at least hard work makes him a man. I do not know what makes me a man, or if anything can besides biology. I like to hear my brother's voice deepening as he talks to me on the phone, as if he has just cleared phlegm from his throat. As if low tones are merit badges of self-sacrifice

You and me both, kid.

When I was nineteen, David Bowie was all the rage, and I longed to be cool enough to do androgyny the way Ziggy Stardust could. My stepfather had a life-size poster of Bowie-as-Ziggy on the inside door of the spare room's closet. My hero wore platform shoes and a silver jumpsuit, glitter eyeshadow. I could never: thirty years too late, six inches too short, and more than a few pounds too heavy. If I had it to do all over again--and was given a choice in the matter--I'd have been a long, tall teenage boy in girls' jeans and too-tight t-shirts, just like nearly everyone of my college friends. Chain smoking, touchy-feely.

I wanted to wear eye-liner when I was in high school, and sometimes my friend Candi would make me up. But my glasses got in the way of my curled eyelashes. Sometimes I'd put on my grandmother's Avon lipstick and kiss the bathroom mirror. She caught me by the mauve smeared toilet paper squares in the trash can, and I learned from then on to flush all evidence.

I won't believe that most boys don't dabble in cosmetics and football player crushes. I won't believe that our daddies didn't kiss when they were sixteen and on fire. At least they thought about it. And I'm here to tell you I did it.



*I have no idea what this is--a poem? an essay? a rumination? the beginning of someone's biography? Either way, I like the voice here, and the honesty, even in the parts that are made up.

The Start of Summer

Well, I did it, y'all. I made it through my first year of graduate school with dazzling success (as if anyone ever assumed I'd do anything but). In this, the semester from hell, wherein I took 15 hours, worked in the Writing Center, TAed 102, and still made time for bluegrass and cheap beer Thursdays, I feel like I did some really good work, achieved a lot of goals I'd set for myself, and had a great time along the way.

But, I ain't gonna lie to you, I'm thankful for summer, because I really need a break. I've already begun my first "for fun" book of the summer, Kevin Brockmeier's The Truth About Celia, and it's shaping up to be a really interesting read. He creates a fictional author who writes the novel in a series of inter-related short stories, which I love, because as of late I've become really fond of the short story genre. Heck, this summer, I might even try to write one or two.

I've also used the free time I've had the past week to work on some new poems, and I'm excited about a sexier one with a particularly striking image of an avocado. It's going on a really good direction, I think, and I'm hoping I can play around with form and try to figure out my own style. I think I've got my subject matter, at least my early twentysomething subject matter: I can write a hell of a witty and poignant white trash poem and sometimes, if I'm lucky, a queer love poem that doesn't get too sappy. I'm sending my first batch of stuff out on Monday, so I'll let you know in a few months if any journals decide to take a chance on a kid like me. Oh, I'm so excited about having more time to write.

Tonight I'm making cupcakes for an end of the year cookout one of my MA friends is throwing at his house. Lemon-cream cheese cupcakes that are going to be the best damned confections all the guests have ever eaten. That is, if they don't deflate when I pull them out of the oven.

To all of you still embroiled with finals-taking and paper-grading, godspeed. It'll be over soon, and then you'll have the summer to relax, and, here's a thought: come visit me! (winking at you, Abby).

To the start of summer!