In-class poem.

Beginnings of “On the Building of Boxes”

Boxes that speed down tracks in trains
Contain stowaways looking for freedom
In a new land.

Constructed like coffins out of slabs
of Cedar, the boxes
are built by laborers’ hands;
The man who builds his coffin
out of rough wood and nails
claims it as his own,
and rides through the night
past mini-waterfalls and
abandoned warehouse parking lots.

My Great Uncle Norm used to
tell my father,
“Butch—these men are looking
for a better life, and they’re
coming here to find it.”
My father asks, “Why must
they hide?” Haven’t we all
been free since Old Abe
proclaimed it?

The boxes have no holes—just
the spaces the laborers leave to
breathe—
No mirrors or vanities. No
food, no bathrooms.

Navajo Blackberry poem

Writing requirements: Use five words out of several given, and weave them into a poem that includes a proverb or aphorism. (Words: cliff, whir, needle, voice, blackberry, clouds, mother, lick)

–

On the precipice of cliffs
We Navajo grow plump blackberries
to sell to hungry tourists.
Mouths purple with our juices,
Teeth stained, they tend to thank
us noble savages–
Voices soft and pedantic,
Humming in a vague whir,
Daunted by their place in our world.

Sometimes we are cruel, and
throw stinkberries into the mix
to watch their eyes go bug-eyed
as they lick the seeds from the
tops of their teeth
and grimace.

They pretend to be appeased
and smiling thinly, give
thanks.
Mother sees, and reminds us sternly,
“Two wrongs don’t make a right.”

..

Following that we were asked to write the same poem in a different style.

Sometimes we put stinkberries in
Bushels of blackberries.
We do it because we’re tired of
Hearing you sympathetically say
“We mourn your loss,”
Like our displaced culture
Benefits from your sense
of Courtesy and Grace.

In-class exercise (on “Henry”)

A re-writing of one of my paragraphs in different styles. One is more mega-prose, one is more windowpane…which is which?

–

Henry shook his hands vigorously, the motion traveling up his arms and sending ripples through the pale white flesh of his shoulders and back. The folds encased in sparse muscle and hard bone wobbled dangerously, and threatened to leap off Henry’s back, and make their own way for a change. He hopped backward and forward and from foot to foot and his junk jangled in his old man boxers, white and striped (and starched) but seeming to be from a different age, a fossil uncovered by some brave adventurer in a crypt, or an ancient cave. For his part, Henry perspired, his face reddening and his cheeks bulging with the excess blood of his exertion. His glands were swollen.

–

Henry attempted to move the features of his face—nose, lips, eyes and tongue—but none would yield. He searched his face with his hands, running them over its contours, coming to rest briefly on his stubble. He had only this morning’s growth: it was not full. He hopped on one leg and then the other to test for signs of stroke, then moved his arms in big windmill motions and shook them out roughly. He sat upon the bed and removed his socks, then counted his toes and wiggled each. He did the same for his fingers, tapping them against his leg in piano-playing motions, tapping in time.

Class stuff (other stuff, too)

He gazed into the landscape under the eclipse. The flight would be delayed a few minutes so the pilots didn’t get blinded flying into the sun. Henry walked up the corridor to do a final count of the passengers on-board. Things had been mostly calm except for a baby screaming and not stopping, and a man who was too big for his seat who complained to everyone within range that he hadn’t paid 300 dollars to sit in a goddamned sardine can. Henry meant to check on the man when he heard the ring of the customer call button. Glancing at the lighted grid on the wall he saw it was the fat man, and he groaned at his impatience. It did not bode well that this man had made first contact. That meant he’d been stewing in his anger for awhile, feeling neglected, and Henry knew he was sure to be on the receiving end of a self-righteous diatribe. Everyone who flew was an authority on in-flight accommodations. He straightened his jacket and strode down the aisle, and he asked the man what he could do for him.
“You could start by moving me to one of those business class seats up there.”
“Sir,” he said, “those seats are filled. I’m sorry, but those customers paid a premium for their tickets.”
“And you don’t think I did?” asked the fat man. His eyes had gone wide, and his bulbous ass bulged over the cramped confines of the seat.
“Well, sir, you didn’t purchase a business class seat. I’m sorry, but we’re very clear up-front about the size of our seats in the Economy section…”

–

Salt:

I felt slukie sitting on a fucking barstool with a guy who was too old for me sitting next to me, poised to vollow me the first chance he got. I had on my best slitties, wrapping around my breasts like hardened wax, and the way my nipples poked out of them, I felt galivened. What the man didn’t know was when Dr. Connor put the selukilim in me he found those traces of cancer that would punctuate the end of a miserable, superficial life. I fingered the part of my dress draped over my hip and was aware for the first time that it didn’t matter who made it, because when I fucked the asshole sitting next to me, he wouldn’t be paying attention. He’d be grunting and sweating into my metastasized cancer as he rolled a nipple between two smoky fingers.

–

Also, these were responses to the thing Barbara linked to on our shared page:

I’m not a brave person. So when we flew into the guardrail I was surprised at how…calm I was. Her car skid on a patch of wet leaves on a hard turn down the Hill, and my only thought in the moment before impact was ‘Are we going through this thing?’

My scariest moment?: A movie. How pathetic is that? Prospects of divorce? Whatever. A bad trip? Okay. But the boogeyman pops out behind a wall and suddenly I’m screaming, this long, low-to-high crescendo, my eyes coming out of their sockets. I’m in a stiff highback chair in the middle of the room, and I’m pushing rewind to watch again.

in-class exercise

I still need to post that third-person exercise, but this is the reflection of it I wrote in class.

UPDATE: Third-person exercise posted below.

Explanation of piece: This is a riff on our third-person limited sudden fiction. We were to write with a first-person narrator that stayed true to that character, while thinking about his background and different aspects of his (or her) character. Earlier in the prompt, we wrote down several things about the character that may/may not have shown up in the piece, including what was in their pockets, their darkest secret, what they’ve broken most recently, etc.

–

Jim smacked Peter’s face as hard as he could with his racket, and Peter’s head went rocketing back over the net, his eyes wide and unblinking, his mouth open and his tongue lolling around. Jim smiled in satisfaction, and waited for the tennis pro to hit Peter’s head back to him. When he did, his own head rang with “GET YOUR OWN WIFE, MOTHERFUCKER!” and he cocked his arm back for a strong topspin return. Topspin meant the ball would get back to him sooner, and it meant that Peter’s face would rub against the ground painfully as it rolled over the unclean surface of the outdoor tennis court.

Peter’s face was already bruised–Jim had seen to that–but it wasn’t enough. He wanted it bloodied, Peter’s pretty hair matted with his own crimson spew. He wanted noses impacted into faces, eyes hanging by stalks…he was out for blood when he returned a lob with a hard smash. Finesse was not in his repertoire. He thought maybe he should be doing this to Jan, but he knew he could never seriously hit a woman. Besides, he knew Jan had no code. He expected more of Peter.

When he finally tired, Jim squeezed Peter’s head in his hand and placed it between the links of the chain link fence surrounding the court. He watched as the blood pooled in unlikely spaces, occupying the ocular orbit and running smoothly out the nose. He thought Peter’s head looked inflamed, and he itched to pop it like a pimple. He didn’t. Instead, he went home to get a beer and fall asleep. He thought he’d see Peter tomorrow, anyway.

–

“I’m selling the Weider gym,” I tell her.
She says that’s nice and I tell her “Yeah, it is.”
“I’ve taken up tennis.”
That makes her pause. I caught her cheating with her tennis pro, so that surprises her. She’s a bitch.

The people at the paper told me I get 4 lines and 100 characters to sell the thing and I’m pretty sure mine is under that, but I haven’t counted yet.

I’m trying to do more cardio. I’ve taken up tennis. I’m drinking less. There’s a cute girl at the club Jan and I go to, and I’m going to see if I can pull her number. Way back when that NEVER was a problem. 20 years later, I don’t think I’ve lost that much.

in-workshop exercises

Explanations for both exercises below: In the first, we were prompted to write about a kindergarten teacher, a rapper, a prison in Hawaii and the first line had to be “I have always wanted Brook Trout.” Everything else we got to decide. In the second, we were instructed just to write about Hell. Music played in the background (as in the first) and we were asked to include it in some way in the piece.

–

“I have always wanted Brook Trout.”
“Really?” Mr. Mayweather asked.
“Yeah,” said Curtis. “Is that so hard to understand?”
“Curtis—you knocked up my daughter. NOTHING is hard to understand anymore.”
“You realize that we’re here to get married, right? This isn’t just me knocking up your daughter.”
Mr. Mayweather had taught Curtis at Hintgen when he was young—5…a kindergartener. He had a hard time dealing with the fact that a student of his who was as LAZY as Curtis would ever have wound up with his daughter.
“You know I make a LOT more money than you, right, Mr. Mayweather?”
“Yeah, Curtis. I do get that.”
“I mean, a LOT. Like I could buy your house and demolish it and build a swimming pool there, I’m that rich.”
“I’m sure Karen would love that, Curtis.”
“You know, Mr. Mayweather? I’m not sure you know what Karen would love.”

–

Hey, look! My stepmother is here… At first I think “It’s funny this should be Hell.” But then I think it’s not so funny when I remember the way Jan used to lay outside and sunbathe topless with her wide leathery back getting more and more cancerous as it got more and more brown. Soft and lilting music plays in the background in Hell, and just as I’m beginning to enjoy it, it changes, and some corny guitar riff cuts into my consciousness, and I remember where I am. It’s funny that everything bad is magnified in Hell—the music louder, the hot air hotter, the walkways steeper and the assholes more…obnoxious. Yesterday I sat in on a meeting of the book club and Oprah was there, and everyone was using words like “dichotomy” and “juxtaposed” like it was the first time they’d said it and not the 500 millionth.

The worst thing, though? It’s the people who’ve been here the longest, seeing them and smelling them—they’ve never bathed—and seeing them before they’d fully evolved, Neanderthals and Humanzees and other creepy half-breeds, all of them big and dumb and dangerous, leering…

Sinterklaas

Explanation for exercise below: We were instructed to include two characters (Santa and a Salesman) at the North Pole whose motivations were these: Santa didn’t want to hug the salesman, but the Salesman wanted to hug Santa.

–

“I’m from Amway,” the man muttered. He looked despondent and worn. Santa rubbed his beard and wondered who had let him in, and how he’d gotten across the Gumdrop Mountains and made it through treacherous frozen cider. The man murmured something about selling Santa cheaper toys made in China, and Santa kept replying that his in-house facility was a more efficient model.

The man then pitched him other ideas, each one more wild than the last, his tone creeping dangerously toward hysteria and his hands itching to roam over Santa’s velvet coat.
“I’d just like—”
“What?” Santa asked, interrupting him. “Four days before Christmas, and you come here to my home?”
“I just want a hug,” the salesman said.

…

From Tuesday.

I’m becoming disgusted with my writing. I feel like it’s descending into gimmick again. It’s maddening.

–

The shack in this old town could have been anything, but it wasn’t: It was a blacksmith’s shop, and just down the street they made butter that they stored in jars and kept cool by placing them in cellars under the earth–the warmer it got outside, the further down they seemed to burrow, descending seemingly bottomless into the black earth with its cool, dank walls. The blacksmith kept his tools neatly arranged in rows and columns on the wall, and an anvil sat in the furthest corner from the door where he banged on pots, pans, ladles, spoons, bolts and cornices for windows.

They were not gray. Most everything in my life is. It is a color that comforts me. My favorite shirts are gray. My car is gray. On the best days, my disposition is gray. Gray is dependable and undemanding. Gray is only not gray when other colors start impinging on it—“sable,” with its smooth, seductive pronunciation; “silver,” with its vast variety (sterling, stainless, burnished, polished or otherwise). Gray does not describe a gradient. Gray is very simply gray.

The old man with the bottlebrush mustache is a reenactor—some themed…

–

That’s as far as I got. My picture was of a man with silvery hair (and a little bit of black) bending his head down to look at the ground. In the background there was a town (I think) with a black shack in the furthest corner. Behind the town was a mountain, and above that was the sky.

A Cat, a Marble and a Schoolteacher.

Pa placed two heavy hands on Charley’s trembling shoulders and shook him gently. “Charley–he’s going to be alright.” But Charley would never forget the way Mr. Tickles wavered as he stood after Charley dropped the soup can on his head. Something was wrong with him–that much Charley knew.

Cats don’t have many marbles. Most aren’t terribly bright. I’ve heard people say that cats KNOW something, that in the glint of their eyes is a reflection of their souls burning, and I guess that’s where you get the stories of witches’ cats, cats with human forms at night, etc. I don’t know that I buy that.

When I began teaching, I had a student who was autistic. Obviously he wasn’t that active with the other kids, but he wasn’t lethargic either. I felt like he knew more than he told. I felt like when he stared within himself he saw something captivating, something bright like silver flashing quickly in and out of the place he kept it stored.

Charley is an autistic boy at the Wheaton School. He is bright but uncommunicative. He plays sometimes by himself (he DOES like to play) and it’s old games he likes. Most kids born in the digital age prefer computer games to jacks, but Charley likes them. He plays with marbles, and something remarkable happens. He devotes his full attention to them, and his line of sight is a tunnel through which something moves. In the glinting, rolling orbs I see his reflection, and sometimes I think a ball is burning, but before I can reach down to grab it, it’s gone, and I can only see it rolling in his eyes.

Exercise in-class (kind of).

I sort of didn’t follow the prompt…This was what popped into my head:

An Alternate History:

My father and I had always been close, but not this close. Thisclose was a recent anomaly–started sometime in the past year to help him weather out his discontent. Now, seated next to my father on a curb at night and crying that nothing will ever be the same, I can’t help think “this isn’t my father.” My father is all kinds of tough, but he’s never had to prove it to me for me to believe it. This was a man who was drafted into war and wouldn’t serve…