Weekend Trifextra

The Weekend Challenge and my response.

The phone rang at 4 am.

My mother, her panic—

a long dilution of vowels.

What? My heartbeat’s

windup, halt and clip.

Cody died. This is where

his organs must have

burst. How will I

clean it up?

___________________

I like this blog and its community. I like their challenges and the responses they get. Hopefully they will like me too, in spite of the fact that I will continue to inflict my poemlets on them. 

Writing exercises nearly always made my brain feel good, provided I have a tiny bit of latitude. For example, I think they want 33-word flash fictions and this is a poem. That's okay --I'm fine with not "winning." But a challenge puts me in a box and says, now find your way out. I like finding my way out of the box.

corollary

So, like I said, yoga on Friday night felt really good. But then I was, like, a little stiff yesterday. Then I woke up alarmingly stiff this morning. Like, hurts to raise hands above head and back muscles are rock hard. But --very important distinction --not spazzy. Yay!

I have determined that I need a hot paraffin capsule bed. It's a slight hindrance that these haven't been invented yet.

I returned to yoga last night

... and it felt good. I had a more ambivalent / articulate summary of the whole thing all planned out in my head, but it's a weekend. And weekends are easy for me to lapse into negativity so we'll just say IT FELT GOOD. I'd had a rough day (long, many tasks, errands, meetings + PT). K saved me a spot.

I felt strong. Thanks Kelly (PT therp) for preparing me to take this step back into something I need-love.

Of course I came home and flopped on the couch half-asleep almost immediately. My husband had to go get me a juice and a granola bar so I could eat "dinner" before going to bed. Then I was like, "Okay, now can you chew it for me?" :)

I plan to go again on Monday.

Sheaves

The other day, at a coffee shop, I was juggling my laptop, a printed copy of the manuscript and a pile of poems I've written since I started this project (i.e. My Semester of Quitting possibly aka My Year of Quitting) that I just call The Sheaf.

I noticed that, when you look at it from the top, the thickness of the MS and the thickness of The Sheaf are about equal. I was like, holy sheaf.

So I counted today. 42 poems in The Sheaf. 39 poems in the MS. Now, I'm not saying that all 42 in the The Sheaf are Freakin Amazing. They are first / second / third drafts. But there's 42 of them. And they are individual completed poems, not fragments or notes for poems.

When have I ever written 42 poems in, let's give a nice wide estimate here, ninety days? I need a reader. I need a reader who is going to patiently tell me which ones of these are going somewhere and which are better left on the launch pad. I need a reader who is qualified, honest, but not needlessly brutal. Some of these have been shown around, but most have only been seen by me. Some of them are in a writing style drastically different from what is in the MS.

I really do feel like I was semi-catatonic for six years and that my brain is trying to make up for lost time. But those were six years of working. Six years of good teaching. I was a good teacher. I was lost in the work. I am a good teacher. I apparently am not so good at multi-tasking. Before I let this blow up into a big unwieldy existential question about my future, I really need to take a shower and leave the house.

jim ferris

... reads at Poetry Speaks in Toledo.

"... save us from the selfless / may they each earn a self" (or at least this is the way I heard it)

Danielle Pafunda

I wish I could find more of her reading on the web.

"The Dead Girls Speak in Unison."

goals

Hrm, I just realized that it is not in my nature to, as many shrinks, psych professionals, counselors, and "life coaches" suggest, to set small reachable goals.

Instead, I set goals that are way too lofty and then inevitably end up falling short of them. However, I try my best to meet the lofty goal, so I still end up accomplishing something.

For example, my goal at the beginning of this semester was 1 journal sub per day and 1 contest sub per week. I found out rather quickly that 1 contest sub per week was unrealistic. Good contests do not come around regularly; rather, they come in chunks. The 1 journal sub per weekday is still a good goal, but I have still fallen short of it. I think the whole feeling of:

1) Gee, I'm sending my stuff into a black hole here
2) Time dilation because this IS my project right now and so not a lot of distraction from it
3) Rejection with no feedback --how close did I come anyway? Did I pick something that was almost but not quite the right fit? Did I miss by a mile? Should I quit my life's work and go back to processing life insurance claims?

leads me into an unhealthy well of self-doubt. I've had four rejections so far since 1/5. My friend Joan (chapbook + 1 full length collection + sending second full-length around) says that she expects 5-10 rejections per acceptance.

I really need to get off myself. I mean: I have been published before. There also exists the chapbook, though I noted yesterday that chapbooks don't rate highly enough with [an institution that shall remain nameless] to qualify as "a list of our alumni's creative accomplishments." This is one of the reasons that I am not sure the posturing and B.S. of academia is something that I want to deal with long-term. Then again, in my experience, there's posturing and B.S. in any competitive job, and if your job isn't competitive, then you have to deal with your boss's posturing and B.S.

What is my damage?