...
at 21 years there was only the city.
i was a gas jockey at a shell station.
i attended a few classes at a community college.
took up with a sweet mormon boy who smoked a fair amount of pot on the regular.
he fancied himself an educated hippie.
we had fucked one night in a hotel room;
i wore a corset, it was white and hooked down the back.
i fastened all 28 clasps and mastered the art of the garter
so as to experience the exact moment at which conception occurs.
he preferred white over black...
we took a road trip up north a week later.
i already sensed the change
.
back in that bed, with the vomit inspired commercial-quality comforter
bunched up beneath me;
his body a lax gravity
smothering mine...
i knew then that i was pregnant.
...
driving up to see my mom, i fixed my face to the window and rested my jaw against the jamb.
we hardly passed a sentence between us. he may have thought i was sleeping.
...
i tested positive three times in Eureka.
we were at my brother's house. the bathroom was canvassed in flesh tones, one bulb
eking out a low-wattage wash.
i curled up tight against my brother's shoulder,
my throat choking out words... syllables spoken in sobs, going mute in the middle
and stuttering half-notes into the delicate crooks of infinite question marks.
i handed the plastic piss-stick to this boy who preferred white,
and watched as light began to slip from the sky.
a boy with patchwork pants and 3 day stubble,
broken by a moment. (from fissures, brackish water breached to flood the valleys of his veins)
...
a plus sign through the window of a polyethylene pod; it was white and sleek, as plastic is.
white has always been an unsavory color, tainting life with it's lofty ideal.
...
i rose slowly, gathering together the incising inches to full height...
a wall marred by apograph of ancestral hands;
from base of palm to longest tip, black as pine ash.
he sat on the stoop at the side door
the flank of a guitar molded to the plains above his knees. fingers, tight at the frets, were
picking.
the sound somehow, resembled a breeze,
which drifted in from the windows of the kitchen.
july will never be simple
...
everything i touched then grew silent,
as if receding into the pith of it's origin.
...
Author notes
option: memories, sharing of. see confession.
ME: NATALIE KEENBERG / DELAYED SCREENING
A contest entry
- Critiques by Melissa Gayle.
1650 points, ended September 4, 2008, 24 entries
Silver trophy winner
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest - Up close and personal (no break up stories) by Ntagatf.
350 points, ended September 21, 2008, 14 entries
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest
Comments
1 - 9 of 9
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I am sorry I am going to have to dq your poem. The rules stated "no swearing" Please read the rules next time!
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Sad
Very emotional yet very true. Many people are like this. Anyway i cant think of much to say kinda took me away, wasnt expecting this but its great. Thank you for entering my contest and i wish you the best of luck!!! Keep up the great work! -
I think you just want to test me here...lol.
Alright, this is taking it as I read:
Stanza one, line three instead of beginning with 'i', maybe say 'attending classes' (leave off 'a few'. Line four, leave off 'on the regular' just not needed.
Stanza two was great and ironically I like the two 'i's' there.
Stanza four, line two leave off 'already'.
Stanza five was great.
Six great.
Seven, love three times positive and the 'Eureka' as a place, it plays well with the words. But I don't care for lines three through five in that stanza, feels unneeded.
Nine fantastic.
The ending though was eh for me. The rest GREAT! Really excellent prosey feeling piece -
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thanks for the crit.
good breakdown of fix-its.
this is more a prose piece, and i wasn't really thinking of it from a poetical standpoint. so it tends to focus on things that seem irrelevant, but i assure you that they are pertinent in the equation. a few of the little things that seem un-needed are just my way of speaking. it is a narrative. it is heavily flawed when read from another frame of perspective. these are the things i should be aware of as a writer, but alas, i am rather attached to a method of finger-painting images with words. i am no Chuck Close; far from photo-realism. shucks. -
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Thank you for being excellent about it. Believe me, I really appreciate it.
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july will never be simple
everything i touched then grew silent
as if receding into the pith of it's origin
oh my god. every section of this was amazing. some of it tended to get wordy but your images were SOLID and i am such a sucker for the word brackish. the tone, the flow, just the message of the piece floored me. i'm so glad that you wrote this out.
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This is astounding. The language is a perfect blend of complex poetics and simple colloquialism. I read this as kind of a whispering...prayer...I suppose. Almost like the narrator is, to be, suffering this traumatic depression and nearly suicidal. The ending seems very surreal, kind of airy in fact. The ending does seem suicidal.
The pith of its origin.
Oh god I love that. It's such a powerful, "in your face" ending.
Light slipping from the sky - what an image. It makes me think of something Dali would paint - obscure, almost fanatically painted colors dripping into some abyss. It's like that sky represents a cold, dark soul...
This is such a passionate and powerful piece, full of vivid images, emotions and rawness.
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it's a recount of a month of my from life 6 years ago.
it is a blend of poetics and casual language, but remains as nothing more than a blunt perspective stating facts within the realm/vacuum of inviter-dermal regression. that's right, made that up just now. if the shoe fits.
i regret the damage that was done to him only. if anything, i was cold and steel eyed about the whole debacle. even that word is callous in this context.
this is a personal account given some form of permanence. not a prayer. a confession. and the closing is just a statement of fact. that was how it was. everything stepped back, one foot secured in the fold where ALL things were at one time( though absent of time ) NO things... this being the axis of existence. our origin, the pith, is the the device which serves as a constant connection to the axis. it resides within us, perpetually set adrift in the bloodstream. to recede into it would erase any physical distraction/ties. there is no better place than this for the mind to righten its self... to digest, or even reconstruct... when nature pulls back from your touch, you are not to interact. when the mind goes quiet and still in the Matmos, it bears some examination....
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Damn. This blew me away. You really hit me hard with this piece. I'm just sitting here reading it over and over again. Parts of it make me laugh. Parts of it I can relate to. I love how you describe colors with their own personality. I've done that before.
"i fastened all 28 clasps and mastered the art of the garter"
that is a beautiful line.
Your ending is quite amazing, I haven't read something this intriguing in a long while. Good luck in that contest. ~ Kerri
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