Everyday Things

In the Limbo of Lost Toys~Alison Stine

Someone stole his sister’s best
and speared them on street signs,
lamp posts, poles, in celebration
of the school year’s end.

A lion bisected by a stop sign,
the straw ticking of his insides
spilled. A doll with x’s
in her eyes. The plush

kingdom softened, lost to rain.
Some of these I took. Some
were taken back, and it was
celebratory, like it is now

when the spoils were once alive,
pausing in their winter pick
of bark and lower branches.
Now the deer have open eyes,

and whatever dreams they have
are dreams disturbed by highway
winds, lashed to truck hoods.
I am told not to look, but look.

How still the dead. How you
are dead, and dead, I might
liken you to the toy horse, drowned
in the fish pool, the way all toys

meet violent ends, legs crossed
in axis, eyes full of milk. I might
liken you to hunters who are
waking up only to lie again

against mold-black trees, so still
as to pass for always. In truth,
nothing will scare the deer,
not even death: unreadable,

roped to bike racks. I might
liken you to everything I lost.
The white dog disappearing
in a storm, and later, the black

running into hacked-off fields
behind which waited flushing
birds, new families. But then
I am forever linking things

to animals. All this I lost
before I lost you, and like you,
all of it changed under new snow,
rain which cored finger-wide

holes, the first grass rolling out
wet and curled from inside
your eyes, which are wider now
but not surprised.

http://www.swinkmag.com/index.html

I picked up Swink magazine recently while looking for design inspiration, and was pleasantly surprised to find three of Alison's poems in the Early 2005 issue. Alison was a sophomore at Denison University when I was a freshman there, and hung out with a talented crowd of writers that included a fellow I was dating (and who I mightily wanted to impress). They all worked/read for Denison's student lit mag, Exile, for which Colin (the erstwhile beau) was the managing editor. I never wanted to be published so badly in my life--I felt if I could just get one poem through the anonymous selection process, I would prove my worth. I was an exceedingly impossible 18-year-old, and the fact that I had never properly studied poetry did not seem a hindrance in the least to me. I wrote and wrote, much of it nonsense, and not until the second issue (Exile was biannual) did I sneak through a solitary poem--it involved Plato, Leibniz, and detachable arms, and was loosely based on the difficulty of sharing a single bed when four arms are present. This was my first published poem--I suppose it whetted my appetite, because here I am, seven years later, still tangled up in the beauty of this process.

Anyways, back to Alison--she was insanely talented, and had a poem published in the Kenyon Review while still at good old Dension--which is impressive. I suppose she might have had the KR Poetry Editor as a teacher, as he was on campus, but she was still wickedly talented even if she was given an insider's nudge. I used to read her stories and poems and marvel at her control and development and subtlety--it doesn't surprise me at all that she's doing well and still publishing.

What I'd like you to note in her poem (above) is her careful footsteps--sometimes when writing poetry, there is an impulse to link every noun with a metaphor or simile, until the poem is a complex muddle of comparisons that seem disjointed. Alison never falls into this trap of being "overly metaphoric." She is unafraid to use short sentences, or to repeat words (death, eyes, signs, look, etc). She wants you to get what she's seeing and to follow her mind's progression--she's very gentle, I find.

I LIVE IN A YELLOW ICE CREAM TRUCK~Molly Tenenbaum

Red script flourishes, circling itself.
A blue square, one per side, sets off a white swan.

It was the rubber gasket
compressing
that whispered the hither.

I wondered, at first,
was it all one space or did each door close
on its own small box?

At the back, a pull-down gate.
A little bed, two books, a pair of socks.
The inside walls are quilted tin.

The swan, dabbed gray for shadows,
jogs as the truck jogs, over a bump,

and who knows if that counts
as motion—not even the blue
she's painted moving through moves,
her angle depends on the truck, on where

it's going, and under it,
on streets ascending, and under them,
on the whole dark dirt world, a city itself,
of mica and sand, wire and pipe.

I don't believe one world is more real than another.

Remember when they sent people to caves
to see when they would sleep?

One little railing for earrings and a mirror,
and for the night, a wide-mouth jar.

It would be better, I admit, with windows.
At night, hatches latched, it's pitch till morning.

What do I miss? Air.
I love the quilted sides
and the rumble of warming.

Darling, why am I sad?
There's nothing like a cubby.

Nothing like a pair of boots
and a bed that folds up.


FROM FIRE, THIS IS MY FIRST OF SEVEN LIVES IN WATER~Molly Tenenbaum

I thought swim meant to linger, splash toes.
The dog and I played Chase-the-Spray with the hose.
Leaping through sprinklers, a pose and a twirl—
Broke her leg, the neighbor girl.

My paintings were watercolor blots.
My chore, to douse fifty flowerpots.
The hose spilled the patio brick maroon.
I loved that word. Maroon, maroon.

At summer camp, last to lower in.
How could they stand it, shock on belly-skin?
What I really love at lakes? Pilings and docks.
Skinny dipping, I read, I lie on the rocks.

What I've known of pools: plugged ears,
And pounding a tilted head for years.
When it trickles out, it's hot.
Of showers: an ex who would not.

For him to undergo required serious debating,
Sympathy, and the house-heat to eighty.
Of baths: When it all gets intense,
Relax, they say, with candles and incense—

I wallow, but only in words of it—
Rill and rillet, guzzle, gullet—
Don't even care what they mean,
Stillicidous, ultramarine,

Pluvial, limnal, deliquesce.
I've never been in a boat, but took a class.
When I practiced on the rower,
The teacher criticized my hunkered shoulder.

The difference, I joke, is that jetsam is black,
As if marsh-talk and all the words for wrack
Don't rip, don't undertow.
Someday my mirror will melt, mercurial flow,

Someone will offer a drink, I'll tip up, slow,
A boat-friend will invite me, gulp, and I'll have to go.

http://thediagram.com/4_4/index.html

Molly is another poet I've met--she teaches at North Seattle Community College, and frequents local poetry events. I never had her as a professor, but I have always marveled at her work, and thoroughly enjoyed the reading she gave at Open Books in Seattle.

The above poems are good examples of how to bend sentence grammar to one's advantage--in my previous postings, I've been harping on grammar and sentence-level punctuation, but actually there are a number of poets who employ unusual structures to great effect. Molly fits this bill--some of her subjects seem implied, and many of her sentences are focused purely on an ongoing action. This gives her work a coversational feel, without drifting into confusion. The chance of confusing your reader is great when sentences are not carefully crafted--Molly shows another way to go about doing this. Plus, her poems are great fun! There's no boo-hoo-hooing here--just a quirky humor and a lively vocab.

Your assignment: All of these poems center around something from an everyday experience--toys, an ice cream truck, boating. Choose something from your own life that would not ordinarily seem poem-worthy, and see what you can build out of it. Sometimes simple beauty is enough.

Best,

Dani