Varnish

That acrid smell
a burning, noxious
unwelcome stench

Peels you, rubs you away
Dissolved

Now clean and square
her fingernail
is primed and ready

Prickling black bristles
drag your shining gloss
like a red red gem—
you bleed pigment
over solid planes

All week she had picked
you, chipped
you, bit
you, spit
you into a pile of dead, red
flakes

Now you gleam,
a liquid soul sacrificed
over half-moon altars

A covenant spun in glass

Healing Day

Today was stressful and filled with laughter.

Imagine a classroom. Its ten students sitting at their formica desks in circle formation as they dissect and analyze the contents of their latest reading assignment. Now image that same classroom of mature-beyond-their-years AP English students all doubled over, laughing hard enough to burst veins and send fat tears rolling down smiling cheeks. Today, this was my class.

Every once in a while, you will have moments like these when it seems like all the pressure and stress that each of us has been holding in for weeks and months and even years just comes bursting out. Sometimes it comes in laughter, sometimes tears, sometimes both. But after the laughter has died off and the tears have been dried, you begin to feel better... you feel healed. You realize that we really are all in this together and it is times like these that remind you of how close we have all become over these past four years of high school. Oh Faulkner! (It's an inside joke, you wouldn't understand).


Today was a healing day.

Good Day

Today was a hard day.

The kind of day you dread all week-- you have papers due, tests to take, essays to write, and that's just the "in-school" stuff! But at the end of the day, I feel victorious. That AP Euro test? Piece of cake. That in class essay? Nailed it. That college essay work shop where you unexpectedly had to give a ten minute presentation in front of the whole grade? No problema.

It's the days like today that test your every nerve, but once you've reached that glorious plateau, the confidence you gain is worth the sweat and tears. It's that sense of accomplishment, when you know you've done your best at a daunting task (or in this case, daunting tasks), that gives you the chutzpah you need to call that hard day a good day.

Today was a good day.

Breaking up is hard to do

we are new
like a crisp pillow sham
like an apple (still stemmed)
like the unbroken filament of a light bulb.

we are over
like a curtain-close bow
like an arrow’s quivering tail
like the very end of a jungle vine.

this is pain
like a size-too-small shoe
like an underwater breath
like the sting of crushed bleeding lips.

as this fades
as the heavy stomach pain fades
you feel the numbing kiss
of Apathy.

She mends you
you welcome Her
like a flood soothes
the scorching desert

and you are strong
like a fallen tree—now immovable in the soil
like an old patch of scarred skin
like the thick membrane tissue of your broken beating heart.

Toothbrush

March 2008

“Mom, where’s my toothbrush?”

“Did you check in the bathroom?”

Did I check in the bathroom? Cue exasperated sigh. Clearly, Mom is going to be of little help in this quest. I am on my own.
My mind begins whirling through all the possible scenarios. I quickly rule out burglary (who would want to steal a toothbrush?) and alien abduction. Could this have been my own doing? Did I lose my toothbrush?

I consider pulling each of The Siblings aside for individual interrogations. The divide-and-conquer method has won victories for me in the past, but I have little reason to suspect them this time.

As I begin to pace sociopath-like through the house in search of my missing toothbrush, the high squeals of childish laughter and the hissing of a hose diverts my attention outdoors. I squint through the glare of the sun and wave to The Siblings as they spray down the grimy anterior of Mom’s minivan and my own “grandma-tested-teenager-approved” Toyota Camry. How wonderfully innocent they look, running through the iridescent arch of the water spewing from the hose. Beside them, a faded bucket filled with sudsy rags and brushes lies neglected in the grass. I feel instantly guilty. How could I have suspected The Siblings of taking my toothbrush, when all along they had been outside, innocently washing…

Oh no.

They wouldn’t. They couldn’t have.

My horror begins to escalate as I catapult off the front porch and make my way towards the vile bucket of grime. I dump its contents onto the crumbling driveway and as the soap begins to clear, I see it. My toothbrush. Its aqua blue handle stands out in stark contrast with the white lather of car cleaner and the muddy water, mocking me for my naivety. How could I have missed this? My embarrassment grows as I think about the smug pride I had felt when, not fifteen minutes ago, I was cleverly ripping off a kindergartener in exchange for a vacuumed and scrubbed car. The joke was clearly on me.

With the fires of hell burning from my retinas I turn my wrathful vengeance to the soapy fiesta that is The Siblings, post-carwash.

“WHO DID THIS?” I wonder briefly if the neighbors can hear me before deciding that I don’t particularly care.

“Who did what?” I take a deep breath and compose myself.

“Which one of you took my toothbrush to wash the car?” Silence.

And then, “We needed it to do the tires.”

Bandwidth

I linger in a digital world
which dazzles like a champagne flute
whose blush of amber liquid
casts you into wet unknowns.
This place of digital knowledge
is a synchronized illusion-
where reality is porcelain
tattooed with broken fault lines.

But the buzzing haze
of hard-drive space
drowns out pleasant digital dreams.
And the taste of wire cords
is laced with electric conversation.
Here, every question has been asked
(and answered) by an unseen cyber deity.

In this digital environment
you have everything there is
but nothing that you need.

Wild

I am golden brown
Tanned feet, hands
Hersey's kiss hair
The shaking drumbeat
of thunder
Sharp shards of cracking
light simmering across the sky
The jungle of my hair
is separating, growing
standing on point
Each follicle
a quivering shape-
the air breathes moisture
into every strand
Frizz, static, curls,
twisting whorls of untamed
disaster.

Never Forget

God bless America.

Oh, Bother

• Ignorant people (the kind who are ignorant by choice, not by circumstance) are perhaps the most infuriating and obnoxious sort of people out there. Fortunately for me, my school is full of them. *sigh*
• Sarah Palin kind-of-sort-of if-you-tilt-your-head-to-the-side-and-squint looks like my mom… and my grandma is telling everybody and their mailman about it.
• Speaking of Sarah Palin, it is not possible for anyone who is concerned about the role of women in our society to question her ability to simultaneously have children and be the vice president. This kind of mentality is not only a sexist view of working women, it is an affront to the stay-home fathers and husbands of those working women whose competence is questioned because the woman who would traditionally have been doing their job has a different career. Women are perfectly capable of producing high quality work at their jobs, without losing the title of ‘mother’ or abandoning their family, just as men are perfectly capable of staying home with their children, and taking care of the hundreds of other tasks involved in raising a family. Either way, it is a team effort. The Palin family will not disintegrate if Sarah is elected. In fact, they seem better off than many families who are not fortunate enough to have two loving and capable parents who are secure enough in themselves and their families to sustain a role reversal. (If it can even be called a reversal… Sarah has been a working mom for many years prior to her candidacy—all the more proof that her family will be just fine.)
• I love my sister, I really do. She is absolutely irreplaceable. But when she rolls her eyes and feigns apathy during an argument, I just about want to bring her back to the store for a refund.
• My Sarah Palin look-a-like mom continues to introduce me to complete strangers (who could not care less about my extracurricular activities) as the “Editor in Chief of the school newspaper”. This is even more embarrassing than when she asks the tour guides during college visits (in front of the whole group) “how many students attend Catholic mass on Sunday, because my daughter’s faith is very important to her”. *slams head on desk*
• I have heard that the torture methods used at Guantanamo Bay included forcing the inmates to do obnoxiously long math homework. This does’t surprise me considering that they do the same thing at my torture chamber… I mean, high school.

What does poetry mean to you?

Poetry is the goal I didn't score.

I love soccer. I love writing. Soccer, like writing, was always one of my "things" that I considered myself pretty good at. But despite my love of running down a dew-misted field, ball at my feet, despite my speed and powerful kick and aggressive defense, I was never very good at scoring goals. This was the detail I never mastered, even though I was good at most of the other aspects of soccer. Poetry is like my inability to score goals. I am a good writer, but for whatever reason, poetry was the one skill in my field that never stuck. Poetry is the ball soaring three feet too high. It is my foot getting stuck in the dirt before that final crucial kick. Poetry is unfamiliar territory.

simply joyful

it’s the poncho joke
that went too far

it’s the clumsy note of music
played by amateur fingers

it’s in the library smell
of untouched tomes and rifled pages

the soaring planes
of a vacuumed carpet

old worn-in cleats
freshly laundered sheets

the security
of familiar clutter

it's the telling of a story…
and having it told back

LOL

Laugh out loud
You know you should
You'd laugh out loud
if you knew you could

I'm laughing right now
but I'll brb,
I need someone else
to come laugh with me.

Pulsera

I love my bracelet. I love the spiraled wire and sturdy old typewriter keys, linked together during one of my aunt's more creative moments as a self-proclaimed jewelry artist. From each key dangles a bead and a charm. They are rather charming charms. They are miniature books, the pages encased in weathered silver. “A True Story”, one is labeled. Another, “My Story”. The last charm is an open book.
Each bead is different. Some are pink, some are green, some are the most opaque kind of purple that when seen over my skin look milky brown.
Two cup-of-tea charms plus a pair of spectacles complete this pulsera. All together, the beads and charms, linked by antique type writer keys spell B-O-O-K-I-S-H-!, which just about sums it up. My bracelet is one of a kind, it is sturdy, yet on occasion, a few charms will fall off, only to be quickly retrieved and mended. My bracelet is words, and books, and images. It is a little rusty in spots where it was left too long on a bathroom counter, but somehow the rust only enhances it—- my bracelet has lived a little and so, I think, have I.

(written 9/7/08)

Again with the changes

Changed the layout again. I felt it was time to live on the edge, you know, take life by the horns and all that.


Woah- this is all a little too much craziness for me, I'm going to go knit something and read a book.

What would you do if you could not write?

Where would it go? Where would all the thought, emotions, observations go? Would they fall by the wayside, forgotten? Would I implode with the bursting pressure of them, like an over-stretched balloon? Would my words die if they lost the immortality of being stained to paper? My writing is pain and passion, love, laughter, family. Would that cease to exist if I could not preserve it? I compare it to a soul. The soul is eternal. My words, my thoughts are eternal. To not write them down is not to say they never were. The air would thicken with the pregnant tendrils of my forbidden words. Unable to be contained in paper, my thoughts would simply drift away, eluding me; they would not die. But like the loss of a soul, it would be an agony to endure the separation.

(written 9/5/08)

Forget

I wish my mind was a tape recorder. I wish it was practical and socially acceptable to carry a notebook with me everywhere I went. To write as I think and document my every thought. To capture observations, put life’s minutiae down to ink and paper. Thoughts like gems, given permanence and physical evidence of their existence. Not retreating into the recesses of memory, forgotten.

The wastefulness of forgetting is a gnawing presence. I want to imprison my impressions of the world. Lock them up, freeze them forever, never forgetting. But I can’t. My thoughts are not gems for safeguarding. They are water, they are sand. They cannot be held in the palms of my hands. I forget, I always forget.

And then it's gone.

(written 9/4/08)

Harry Potter Bookmarks

I made up a couple of these Harry Potter bookmarks to use for my Deathly Hallows book.

The first contains one of my favorite quotes from the entire series. It is Dumbledore's last line in Deathly Hallows and it perfectly captures the conversation that had taken place between himself and Harry at King's Cross. More importantly however, I think that line was JKR's beautiful tribute to magic, reading, readers, and all the Harry Potter novels as a whole. Although the world of Harry Potter and the fictional characters we come to love so dearly are works of the mind and the imagination, it does not make them any less real.

Harry will always be real to me.




The second bookmark is actually a quote I got from an interview with Daniel Radcliffe. These were the words Anton Chekhov used to describe the woman who he eventually came to marry, and I thought it fit perfectly with the way I felt during and after Deathly Hallows was released and the Harry Potter novels came to an end. Though the conclusion of the books didn't literally end my life, they did make up a huge part of my childhood and teen years and when I finished them, it was like ending a chapter in my life... that is, a glorious, magical, and unforgettable chapter of my life!