Author Archives: Christina M.
Louder
Talk loud
That was really good, man
Turn up the volume
Bold?
I think I have been.
McKeen Ass. 2 Proxy Poem
You, charging up that hill
Heedless immoderate thing, sturdy terracotta child
You fall often, but seldom cry
And often I tell you, Sometimes you gotta eat the pain.
Sometimes you gotta surf it
You run with your eyes your arms your heart
flung open
You run downhill too fast
You will be crushed
in a thousand different ways but
I remember I didn’t care either when
I was a sun-gilded Belleek earth baby
Greedy hungry thing
Falling is not the same as being pushed you tell me
the night of your grievous pain
and you shake with sorrow in your chest and
I shake with murder in mine
You tell me you will fling it all open again
You already know you’re not done running
You are not made of glass, or china or terracotta
He hasn’t killed you
Pinched out your flame with careless fingers
No one will see this part but you, is what you tell me
Helpless, I speak to your bowed head
Eat the pain.
Or surf it.
Renga
My God.
Bitter, heroic motherhood
The loneliest part of the universe.
“You are too easily defeated!”
This is the most exquisite thing.
McKeen Assignment 2
First
I nearly don’t remember you at all but
Here was the place
My first time, yours too
Things you lose: your patience your temper your heart your mind your car keys
Lose your way lose ground lose an advantage lose control
Did we lose our innocence? It’s a silly thought
We were tough smart kids before, tough smart kids after
Although maybe a little bit softer
I was softer, after
And anyway, technically nothing was lost that night
It was just an intimate physical clinical experiment gone slightly awry
All over my thigh, and
I nearly don’t remember you at all
Or that night either, except for the pin-wheeling stars
Straight-backed trees a stern wall of witnesses behind
Warm wet wooden planks under my shoulder blades
Cool slapping water, and murky water smells
Conscious that I smelled like the deep-fat fryer I slaved over every day that summer
But you?
I nearly don’t remember you at all
You were skinny and blond and you talked about rugby and bored me to death
You said you hated my town. I hated my town too
You tasted like beer and tobacco, which was exciting
I was pretty sure you were sophisticated
I thought you were cute, but I can’t remember your face as well as I can remember
the spirals of the stars,
the straightness of the trees
When you’re young you’ve got nothing to lose,
when you’re not, you’ve got everything to lose
Somewhere in the world right now, like me, you’re not young
Are you fat? Prosperous, happy, divorced, bereaved?
Burdened by stresses we couldn’t imagine
when we were young together on a night
so fat with the future it felt like Too Much?
Ready to live it all, have it all,
innocent before and after, in the way tough smart kids are innocent,
we didn’t know the risk, that everything we live and have can be lost.
I don’t think about that night often, or really ever,
And I nearly don’t remember you at all
but that being said, I’m thinking about it now
and although your form is dim
your name carelessly lost like car keys,
I would just like to say that I am thinking of you with enough tenderness
for the skinny boy you were
the man you may have become
and the losses you may have suffered along the way
that I can almost say, at long last
although I nearly don’t remember you at all,
I kind of love you
At Sandy Cove
Go there in the evening of a high summer day when the sky is clear and the moon is full. The light of it, and the stars, will be cold in the warm air. Be barefoot, as you will want to experience the boundary between the warm dry sand and cool wet pack through the soles of your feet. Lie on your back so that you can feel the loose sand shift beneath your weight, mold to your spine and fill the hollow of your lower back. Feel your heels sink into the earth. Don’t close your eyes. Open your mouth and breathe out. You are sending a piece of your warm self upwards into the cold starlight to become part of something ice cold and infinite.
Response to Rita Joe
http://www.mbteach.org/pdfs/pd/osd/OSD-RitaJoe.pdf
Think. Believe. Know.
Show me what
I have never thought, believed, known
I will listen
As you talk
As I walk
Through your
Thinking, believing, knowing