Improv 2 Week 6

From White on White

XXX

It burns you, the memory of the night before

we spoke, burns you, the salt

of the mouth which bit

before it kissed.

You don’t have room to die

with the morning, you only have a hole

in which to hide your tears,

a dry branch for chasing off the flies.

The soul’s task is to unlearn

animals are the great marvel,

no memory of having been brother

to the morning star.

Perhaps already quenched or crumbling to dark.

                                    Eugenio De Andrade

Split Opened Salt on a Shaken Wound

“It burns you, the memory of the night before

we spoke, burns you, the salt

of the mouth which bit

before it kissed.” 

I felt your glare rocking the

tables, sliding for salt, drawing

the lines of my mouth over the folds

of the night.

You wanted to kiss, the night we

shared memories of the ocean’s

mouth spewing its salted spit. 

The salt kissed mouth of your loins

still burn and bite at the memory

of my bare breasts rising each time

you spoke of your ocean’s

polished pearl. But when you kissed,

your lips shed.  Now, the memories of you tearing

at the dead, burnt salt layers of your mouth,

hungry for something I couldn’t give,

rough fuck the sockets of these small moons. 

You burn me, you burn, burn, me, burn, burns. 

The memory of the night before we spoke

still tumbles into the mouth of my clavicle and bites, 

split opened salt on a shaken wound.

But who wouldn’t want to keep that blooming porcelain buried inside

their mountain, or that stiff bodice straddling their head, horned horse?

                                                                  Brandy Adams

I tried the recursive method that we were asked to do in for calisthenics, and this is the outcome.  Normally, I would not post something like this but I would like some suggestions on what to do with it.  There are moments of the draft that I like but I am stuck.  Thanks!

Improv 1 Week 6

Faith-Based Option

Don't take this for granted:
glue things down.

A computer terminal
crusted with post-it notes
is ephemeral. The translation
could take years, still leave us
baffled, like crop circles, like
UFOs. Just plug
into the flow.
Don't waste
a moment. Speak
as quickly as you can
before you get married
or abducted.

Flag me a cab. Read me
a testimonial
              of recovery in the back seat
while Mohammed takes us west along Division Street.

Remember:
fine-lined tattoos
blur over time.
The skin absorbs ink
as if it's thirsty.
Your name will smudge.
My name will smudge.

Manage solidity. Start anew.

(Some nights I miss you
more than others -- unspeakably,
irreparably, irretrievably.
Last thing
before bed.)

                 Erika Meitner

Opened-Brain Option

Don’t take this for granted:

it is the unique that keeps us interested.

That Donna Karan dress

was worn as an emerald

sheath, its sheer illusion

floating as pelicans do,

jagged and unsure.

In his gait, lazy

heels          scrubbed

unnerved passers-by.

Those whispers on the west

side of South Street

elude their disposition

and sit quietly atop the

neglected           washing basin,

the mailman as unclean

as this disposal that

grinds the maggot-rot to

shoehorn more untruths.

Understand:

when the slender silhouettes

of the cypresses slant

in protest of the

breeze, drawing

the mouth-line of

uncertainty against

the raven night,

stars dot the eyes

like glitter in the silver

shadowed crevice

below the drawn brow,

his red lips lift into

a “U.”

Disgrace belongs only

to the others.

(Later, the owners

will collect those once

whispers, lie them on

their pillows, with idle

motors— unspeakably

intrigued.

Like Picasso’s,

“Skull and Pitcher.”)

                   Brandy Adams

Free Entry 1 Week 6

Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes

First, her tippet made of tulle,
easily lifted off her shoulders and laid
on the back of a wooden chair.

And her bonnet,
the bow undone with a light forward pull.

Then the long white dress, a more
complicated matter with mother-of-pearl
buttons down the back,
so tiny and numerous that it takes forever
before my hands can part the fabric,
like a swimmer's dividing water,
and slip inside.

You will want to know
that she was standing
by an open window in an upstairs bedroom,
motionless, a little wide-eyed,
looking out at the orchard below,
the white dress puddled at her feet
on the wide-board, hardwood floor.

The complexity of women's undergarments
in nineteenth-century America
is not to be waved off,
and I proceeded like a polar explorer
through clips, clasps, and moorings,
catches, straps, and whalebone stays,
sailing toward the iceberg of her nakedness.

Later, I wrote in a notebook
it was like riding a swan into the night,
but, of course, I cannot tell you everything -
the way she closed her eyes to the orchard,
how her hair tumbled free of its pins,
how there were sudden dashes
whenever we spoke.

What I can tell you is
it was terribly quiet in Amherst
that Sabbath afternoon,
nothing but a carriage passing the house,
a fly buzzing in a windowpane.

So I could plainly hear her inhale
when I undid the very top
hook-and-eye fastener of her corset

and I could hear her sigh when finally it was unloosed,
the way some readers sigh when they realize
that Hope has feathers,
that reason is a plank,
that life is a loaded gun
that looks right at you with a yellow eye.

                           Billy Collins

I would really like to find the time to use the replacement calisthenics on this piece.  Or if nothing else write a draft of a similar idea.  I admire the work Collins has done, here.  Dickinson seemed so proper that it’s twisted to see her in this light.  I would like to find something completely unexpected and twisted to write about, something that would blow somebody’s mind to read.  From this point on I strive to write like Billy Collins.  (;  

Junkyard Quote 4 Week 6

Junkyard quotes:  “Soot around my nose and mismatched flip flops.” ~A friend

Junkyard Quote 3 Week 6

“Mom got an underwire, they were enormous. She was like, ‘you can’t wear cleavage out to there.’” ~A friend

Junkyard Quote 2 Week 6

“She was crazy. She would get mad at me and smash my things. There were a thousand, thousand unicorns horns stuck in the drywall.” ~A friend

Junkyard Quote 1 Week 6

“Barbie had a gray bush.” ~I was intoxicated