Calamity Jane my life in cars my grandfather was a magician the second theatre I fell in love with Fake Queerâ„¢ Laws of Physics Little Blessings Ode to a Small Town Why I Go On Long Drives wildflowers grow in ditches To Love Recklessly to be human is to be beautiful in contradiction missingness ("hiraeth," Welsh/"saudaude," Portugese) How Can I Love When I'm Worn Out in the World Evangelicals It always feel so good to deglaze the pan we are loud and joyful people just family things
potential lines
Spoiler! :
Come away with me into the desert and
The wind in the trees sounds like the seas, an ocean overhead, solid sky beneath my feet
a forest so green it's like I'd never seen a summer day
keep moving like a shark or I'll sink and die an object in motion stays in motion
If she were a dog, she'd be the kind of dog whose whole body wiggles when she wags her tail and if she were a flower she'd grow toward the sun
our way to dispel evil is through love, but sometimes you just have to fashion a whip and drive the moneychangers out of the Temple
quotes
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"We are hollow bones" (Black Elk) "he's naked, which is what he's always doing" (my sister) "Dianne Kay Drennan, 1958-2009: a pioneer for women in the airforce - 'love one another'" (a tombstone) "when you're curling your toes, clenching your feet, damaging yourself to fit into shoes two sizes too small" (a tumblr post) "mushily called 'real life'" (Leo Rosten) "mazes we cannot unriddle" (Leo Rosten) "inner, furious grace" (Leo Rosten) "God, with whom he had very little in common" (Leo Rosten) "may you look out the window when the light is just how you like it" (a tumblr post) "if anyone is a curmudgeon please have a couple of drinks and yell THERE IS STILL BEAUTY IN THIS WORLD, KAREN" (@ erinscafe on Twitter) "he died, he got up, so you need to get up - come on" (Pastor Mike from class)
ideas
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beautiful people are happy we built sandcastles that washed away rocks, trees, graffiti on a freeway overpass, the way we need to leave our mark on everything, the final mark carved into a headstone planes the time Nadia bought my lunch for me 810 and 586 area codes; transcripts from SC4 looking into other cars when we see license plates from home when we're out of state human connection: names carved into tree trunks, rocks, graffiti on the sides of freeway overpasses, handprints in concrete, we like to make our mark bird list poem smells I like list poem marriage/funeral juxtaposition list poem about Marine City with numbers of different businesses and ending perhaps with numbers about the immediate family fireflies and first loves a snow poem dog-eared pages: the sign of a book well-loved midwinter and the way the Christmas lights still up give me hope determined but not dedicated a recipe poem making yourself fit into the relationship, closing in on yourself, tamping yourself down something akin to I miss the birds in winter but more hopeful/cheerful [although idk reading back over I miss the birds in winter that's pretty hopeful already]
potential revisions
Spoiler! :
synthesis Girt in Nonsense Impostor Syndrome The Fruit You Gave Me I want to fix up old houses the in-between ages SAH 289 [*sighs loudly*] actually all the grandparent poems from last April that I hardcore angsted over
if she were a dog, she'd be the kind of dog whose whole body wiggles when she wags her tail
and if she were a flower, she'd be a dandelion:
[not actually sure about running with the angst but here it is in case I wanna tack it on the end]
maybe she knocks over vases and visitors [something about dandelions - oh wait what if I take the angst and turn it around into a good thing again, like people don't like that she's so strong and determined or something]
actually now I could take this poem two different directions - I could continue purely with the happiness/excitment/passion personality thing like "here's a sketch of this beautifully excited person" OR I could take that a bit further and be like "but she's afraid she annoys people" bc big excitable dogs and dandelions both annoy many people
and if she were a flower she'd grow toward the sun
*flowers generally grow toward the sun, fam, so,,,,,,,maybe another more specific image like the dog image??? or,,,,,,,adding something to the flower line somehow? bc I do like it but it is in fact just,,,an obvious thing,,,,
*dandelions *[brightly][furiously] yellow *connected? like,,,dandelions are uhhh a network or something aren't they? oh god do I have to do RESEARCH for a POEM??? *growing in the crack of a sidewalk
I BARELY contributed to this, but I did contribute, so here we are. The primary collaborators were @alliyah and @CaptainJack. Can you guess which bits are mine? Hint: it's practically none!
a fraying thread a cracked bowl worn through, an old coat outgrown, secondhand in the first place
filling in the cracks with gold
[idk I like the idea of that but I feel like at this point the use of kintsugi imagery in poetry about being broken is overdone] [also I feel like I'd like to focus more on the *feeling* - feeling fragile and frayed? which aside from being relevant for many people these days is something I've felt many times in the past]
[also started out with:]
frayed like a thread/cracked like a bowl
[can't decide if I want to go with simile or metaphor]
ahh blue! congrats!!!! way ahead of schedule, and I really do like this first poem! The use of a dandelion and color is a nice visual and the last two lines hit hard <33
name: key/string/perks pronouns: she/her/hers and they/them/theirs
novel: the clocktower (camp nano apr 24) poetry: the beauty of the untold (napo 2024)
Gender:
Points: 91930
Reviews: 1735