Washing Sheets

human dust sends a haze
of past lovers, gnats
rising in the rain

at the swamp
picking litter
eleven years from here
Joe caked mud on the wound
leaving his handprint on my knee
as we waded home

as fingers through basins
steeping pieces once known
follicles, ashes

Zucker Imitation

This poem's an imitation of Rachel Zucker's "Diary [The Fourth Seed]" from EATING IN THE UNDERWORLD.

Forest de Morrois

leaving was easy, but to look at your face –

time has spilled all over it

I tell you, here I’m getting greener

according to a natural process, growing

without regard to the courts and spouses

and what a lady is and maybe you’re feeling ashamed but

I am not

my own

I’m beginning to wonder if we

still sleep with a blade between us

April Afternoon

I'm not quite sure if this will be the final draft of this poem, but I wanted to post it anyway. If anyone has any helpful comments that would be fantastic.

April Afternoon

Sipping green tea with the lid off surrounded by students.
Pondering Yeats’s realization of never reaching Druid status:
Crushed dreams or understood he caught “fairy stroke.”
Man driving, lunch in hand,
passerbyers wearing t-shirts.
Beyond these things:
Christmas wreath welcome
House wrapped in vines, lights out, inside
tree decorated, glass ornaments,
needles circle- scent from kitchen
green white speckled cookies counter
Beatrice in red velvet dress, sugar plum
apron, too long taking tenth batch out-

Jingling

Cell phone It’s time for class.

Simic Imitation

This is an imitation of the poem found on page 29 of Charles Simic's The World Doesn't End.

April 16th, 2007

A dog with no soul, valid brand? You are

beyond reach. Thirty-two plus your own, all for
selfish motives. Institution of knowledge abruptly
a killing field. Textbook tombstones for deceased.
Movies, video games, what’s your excuse? Missing human
compassion.

Blood- and- guts firecrackers, personal statement? Or

chance to understand the darkness?

What we learned
The Arizona Republic, 14 November 2005

Elegy

How do they begin
with no mention of who,
why, the shady brown hair
sleek as chestnuts buried
in the afternoon sun, like
a long chain, an iron rival
to the history of time, dear
as Hawkings’ Big Bang theory
& blank as dark matter, an opulent
breeze and Basho writing
I pass as all things do, because
what comes before this
ripe trek, surge & thrust
towards the dour sky, one path
lean as Georgia palms at dusk,
heads nodding off as if they too
say Yes, give in to this warm
desire with no remnants, buckles
unlocked and seats reclined, exactly
what the stewardess denies
when she should be floating down
the aisle, lucid and thinking
of nothing, only filling the empty
space after “life is…”, light
as a coy whisper without belongings,
or the need to keep them even
when the poetry stops, the plane
lands and the baggage opens
up from overhead, a grim
compartment holding odds, ends,
narrow as fish hooks used
in a freshwater stream. Your
green barrette? I will always
have it. I keep it
still.

Expecting Entertainment -McKenzie

There are several versions of the loss

she felt --one with thickness between

swallows, another of faces behind walls.

She let them dance green in sunlight

and gave up on smiles. Dried out flowers

with notes of music divine, she watched

the mouse’s heart break in the garden

below. Its pieces nestled in overgrowth,

next to bathing finches, stopped hands

which held glasses midair. They were

the windows, they held fish streaming

through. The fish left ripples, left

notebooks picked up by strangers.

Buried Alive

Pulling leaves from my hair almost

as naturally as I blew wishes from dandelions

this was of course, after one full minute of being

buried alive, in a pile my mom raked earlier that

afternoon.

I had laid there, still as possible with my mouth

shut tight-afraid it may burst with gasp or giggle,

unearth my hiding spot to the hunter,

my older brother, who with the taste for revenge

stuck between his teeth sought me out

in our backyard while I lay

dead,

avoiding the taste of autumn, soft bits

of soil and earth that fell on my lips,

hoping for the first time in nine years to feel

invisible.

All the while twigs poking

at my sanity, bugs crawling all over

my pride, grass tickling the quarter inch

of skin between my sock and pant leg that lay

exposed

Alerted by crinkling of leaves under foot,

I counted one two three!

tuck ducked and rolled just as

the attack ensued, there was a struggle,

faces shoved into dirt, leaves shoved down

pants, in mouth, up shirt, grass stained and glowing

I ran.

Jeremy Shulkin: In Our Remodeled Home

This is an imitation of a poem by Rachel Zucker, from her book "Eating in the Underworld." This version has strayed a little from the original poem's format, but the line "Some call it love, some obligation" comes directly out of Zucker's writing. My poem tries to stay consistant with the original, focusing on a relationship between two people.



In Our Remodeled Home

An island erupts in the middle of a once modest kitchen
new tiled floors already scored by pebbles, dropped knives

Some call it love, some obligation
both perhaps, but I never obliged

Busy and bus-boyish I serve silverware
empty plates, spoons cupping excuses

I believe if I cut onions, she will cry
and the oven, is well, an oven
(and much too much for me)

The TV flickers enough like pilot lights
that withstand wind from late work phone calls

Trevor's Imitation poem

Untitled poem inspired by a friend and a Rachel Zucker poem, "DIARY [ THE FIRST SEED]" from EATING IN THE UNDERWORLD.




He stops to see me in raining Worcester
a digression

splashes me with drumming to celebrate freedom
his blues

conveys the drunken displaced son forsaken
anguished forehead

beyond bars, there'll be more detours before

bed in Miami, Nicolette's support:
stretching crooked limbs with love despite limitations

poems that Cat wrote.

Katie liked barbies
and I liked jumping off rocks
so we jumped
with their swimsuits & ballgowns
in our pockets until her mom yelled
lunch!! and we feasted
ending always with juice
the flavor of everything red.
we tumbled back outside
dirt-sandcastles under the porch,
battling imaginary pirates,
playing with worms when it rained
and one day she said
where's new york? and one month later
I waved goodbye

the new people in their old house
painted it bluepurple and bulldozed
our rocks into the woods
and I don't know who Katie is
anymore, or even if she found out
about new york. I can’t remember
if her brother played with us,
or if they had a swimming pool
and I wonder if she has forgotten
too.

Inside, Out.

The radiator is whistling, crooked and drunk in its corner. There are millions of captured teakettles inside the coils, screaming to escape its clutches.

There is a man outside on a broken bench, poised with notebook and pen. The sunshine people walking by are impressed that he is a writer. He lets them believe, and makes scribbles and little drawings of the clouds. The sky is hurling angry bits of itself to the ground - he hurries home to tape garbage bags over the windows.

happy birthday.


i called your house
today, to inquire about
plans for your 21^st
and how many bottles of
jameson you’d –
on the third ring my heart
fell out, bouncing sloppily
and disappearing into a shadowy
corner and my eyes
made foreign shapes out of my
bookshelves and armchair,
but light around the borders
and glowing, focusing on the sharp
carved edges of your name on that
speckled marble, catching the light
with a clean, bold finality.

how many years, decades,
can you carry over; a
place setting at easter
for your shimmering memory.
if there are sycamores and elms
toppling to forest floors
and there are no ears around,
it was not a silent effort,
only unacknowledged.
i wonder how many birthday candles
should be illuminating tonight’s
creeping darkness -
and the difference in remembering,
imagining out of respect for you,
and scrambling at holding on
for the sake of me.

- Cat Brousseau