Category Archives: Creative

04/6/17

Matthew’s event poems

Summer Nights

  1. When a twinkling blanket covers the night sky, grab your friends, some towels, a bottle of tequila and red solos.
  2. Head to the sand-filled pebbly shore.
  3. As you stroll near your destination, turn off your lights that dim the path. Slowly step and follow the tones of the rolling waves.
  4. Toss off your flip-flops. Crunch the cool sand and pebbles between your toes.
  5. Slide down your trunks and toss them close to your soles.
  6. Focus on each other’s sounds, footsteps, and breathing to gather near.
  7. Pour an ounce…maybe two
  8. Arriba—Abajo—Al Centro—Pa’ Dentro!
  9. Run, run, run! Pam An into the water. Go, go, go! No thinking, nor stopping until you’re all the way in.
  10. Tread close together and Listen. Listen to the silence. Listen to the treading. Listen to the night. Listen.

 

No Assembly Required

  1. Put on a bright Yellow polo shirt and blue jeans.
  2. Head over to your local Furniture-assembly Warehouse
  3. Make your way through the showroom and become acquainted with your surroundings.
  4. Look busy until the first person asks a question. Be startled, but then polite and respond with confident, yet confusing directions that may or may not lead them to what they are looking for.
  5. Now that you have talked to a customer, pick a display—any display. Start rearranging it the way you want it to look.
  6. Arrange it like confident designer—be inspired, Kim Cattrall Mannequin Feel free to ask customers for advice in the process.
  7. If an employee interrupts your creative designing, comment that you are figuring out how these pieces will look in your space—better than buying it and returning it.
  8. If he/she questions you about your clothes, comment about what they are wearing and who are they to judge, they are wearing the same thing. Yellow and blue look great together.
  9. Have fun arranging your new space; take a picture of you in it for social media.

Before you leave make sure you stop to get a ice-cream cone or splurge and get a Lingonberry Sundae. Remind them of your staff

03/30/17

A first-family-holiday-as-a-PhD-student event

  1. Do NOT use the following words:
    1. Discourse
    2. Hegemony
    3. Subjectivity
    4. Problematic
    5. “Post”- anything
  2. Expect furrowed brows when discussing your research.
  3. “Oh! You have so much time to work out now!” Smile tightly. At least that’s tight.
  4. Remind: no, it’s not teachers college, that was eight years ago, remember?
  5. Assure that you’re not going to be a stay at home mom now. You’re not even pregnant.
  6. Go to the basement. Wear thick socks. Look through old journals. Remember everything you always wanted for yourself. This is part of that.
  7. Doze. Read. Try The girl who was Saturday night (2014).
  8. Feed the dog too many treats. Walk her in the woods around 4pm, right when the light gives you sideways glances through the pines.
  9. Let yourself be driven through your hometown like you’re 14 again. Let the adults talk. Lean against the cold window. Listen to the radio. Pretend to be in the music video.
  10. On the plane ride home, open the meditation app you downloaded while waiting in the Zone 4 line. Listen to “Silk Waves” for “reduced anxiety.” Quickly switch to Robert Johnson.
03/30/17

Tree Bonding Event

1. Find a stump of a recently cut down tree in a grove
2. Count the rings to determine the tree’s age when chopped
3. Measure the circumference of the tree with hands, arms, a piece of sting etc.
4. Remove bark from the stump
5. Take shreds of the bark to make a face on the top part of the stump
6. Find another tree with a similar circumference to the tree chopped down
7. Tell that tree how the fallen one is feeling now

03/23/17

Sky Stink-Eye

The sky grimaces because

I always stare, causing discomfort. He

twists his clouds up into funnels,

trying to create a portal of

escape.

 

But he can’t leave here; he’s stuck.

Uncrossing his legs, he spreads them wide- like

the men on the bus who heat up my knees by

forcing them together to rub until

I’m dumped off at Main- he sighs a

scorched wind and slouches into the sunset.

 

I look away, satisfied, and a little lower now,

seeing even from here that someone’s fallen

on the mountain; a thick vein of packed snow

marks where they slid, likely headfirst, down the

north side.

 

A couple of white birches were hit- their skins

rolling tightly into themselves like little fists, ready

to strike. It’s nothing critical-

but some leaves are still vibrating.

They didn’t see it coming and

that scared them.

 

Now, the crocuses are poking out in the valley,

spilling purple everywhere,

reminding me of when I buried

costume jewelry in the garden.

I thought I could grow more bangles and broaches,

that they needed extra

sunshine for that sparkle.

 

Now I know that’s all overrated;

it’s much better to look out and churn

the grey.

03/20/17

It never tastes as it smells

Institutional cleaning agents fill the hallway
The musty not-often used lecture hall downtown
Filling with people and their inoffensive scent
Head & Shoulder from the head in front of me
The elderly woman dabblings of perfume
Versace, Prada? Claire de la Lune?
But mostly sweat, increasingly in the room
Full-capacity, air conditioner turned off.

Claudette introduces the guest lecturer
Her first slide talks of pine trees
Go to your mind palace, breathe in pine
“A pine tree is time… all being is time…”
Ruth Ozeki appears on the screen like a
Breath of fresh air
Before the talk turns to the doomsday clock
And Kyoto Hayashi’s time hopping.
Barad’s prezi slideshow swishes from
Circle to circle until, tasting tension,
The corner of the screen begins its countdown
“Screen will shut down in 19, 18, 17…”
Without breaking her stride, yet beads of sweat
She senses the energy change in the room
Prompted by the high-ceiling release of ozone
As the projector cools down.

On again, not missing a beat, the glitch
Has been quantum erased
Less of a stench of nerves as questions begin.
Mine first! Zuni in New Mexico? No…
Time crystals? Why the big stir? It’s cute.
Dark matter? Doesn’t fit her poetics.
Beyond her lifetime. How about Freud?
She might never get to unconscious.
Do physicists misrepresent the artists?
It is a matter of ownership, pastiche of QFT,
and you can’t track the theory for the trees.
Last one from Claudette, did she study
East Asian thought? She has not.
(But what of Time Being’s appendix?)

So tell me about Ozeki and quantum Zen
“I hated the book,” she says as wine swills
Handed to her by a patient Claudette
Cheese and anti pasta on trays sitting far off
“Mind if I steal her away?”
She can almost taste it, but not quite there
A paper will be published,
Its digital details sent out
Yet the smell of those pages remain
But is not to everyone’s tastes