what is a pome is inside of your body

[beautiful liar]

so because lando nominated me for most creative cmer, i figured i'll post some recent work to at least make it a worthwhile nom. (recently i got a response from a poetry magazine asking me to make some changes and resubmit my poems ... i'm moving on from straightforward rejections, guys!)

anyways, here goes:

Night Drive

glimpses behind
the wheel of the crack
and twist of metal
impact, the wreck
on the other side of the meridian.
white-knuckled, my fingers
grasp at the wheel,
leg muscles locked above
the pedal afraid to apply
pressure and surge

past last night, the
thrust of hips,
my eyes shuttered against
a face, against a flash panic
of spiralling out of control.
flashes of skin seep through
my lids, they flutter open, naked
bodies crash; mine, smaller,
crumples upon contact.

focusing on taillights
ahead, I follow
automatically,
seeing nothing
outside those narrow
beams of light.

[beautiful liar]

Grandmother Tongue

Language standardization has systematically worked against the underclass as well as women --A. Parakrama

Systems of guilt and language
built on the strength of my Grandmother’s tongue.
Gauge the weight of linguistic systems
to determine the strength of guilt.
Strictness of language burdens my tongue
with systems of guilt, my Grandmother’s
strength, her words, my worth. Grandma,
for standards of strength in language
we are guilty.
In Grandmother’s system signals of class are standard.
Splits from standard language are stigma.
Sick of the weight of tongues I stand on the system.
Grandma or strands of language splitting.
If standards, strength. If splits, guilt.
Spitting at standards to alleviate guilt.
Stand for or against the language stricture of
the word class, the tongue class, the language
classification of standards.

I am guilty of tongues and words.

Worth of words, Grandma, or guilty strands.
Is your guilt my guilt, of systems of stands?
Gage the system of standardized words.
Work against my split tongue, sick language.
My non-standard system of tongues
devalues the weight of my worth.
Words emerge from language and tongues.
System of wanting or worth.
To stand and spit on systems of standards takes strength.
Withdrawing from snarled systems, I reclaim
words from standards you embraced.
Strict structure of tongue, of Grandmother language. Split the stricture
or standards stick.
To stand on the strength of my Grandmother’s tongue
is to standardize the weight of my guilt.

Sick of the weight of class, I language.
Non-gaging of standards continues
the system sickness. Speak
in one tongue, or many, to distinguish
self from system. Tonguing against or for
or with guilt. Other tongues are struck, split, spoilt
by classification.
Strike the system with other standards.
Erase the stigmas of tongues and self.
Declassify the state of language,
the strength of words. Signal others
of approaching guilt secretly.
Shifting language mystifies
standards with splits. Merge tongue
with other to slip outside the standards.
Disengage from burdened language
to gain diverse values. With words,
a stand.

Grand other, take this
tongue and twin it. Replicate
these words and systems. Watch them
root and sprout organically.
When we meet again, will language
stems snap? Stopped with
awe at the strangeness of
each other’s tongues. Our split
of standards become strong systems,
built with shared burdens,
easing language sickness.
Intersect the systems to gain
strength. Let the tongue gage.
It is worth the wait.

Loosen the stricture of strictness.
Let standards slacken, slip outside
the structure of words, this sense
of worth, or less. Submerge in a
shifting system. Find another tongue
and stand by it. Outside the strands
of guilt is language. My womb
of words is mothering tongues,
infant systems. Grandma, meet
my daughter language; built on
your system, but outside your
language class. Let her gage
her own words free of guilt.
I have spit on your language, Grandma,
so that she can value a whole tongue
or many. Language working for
her, words becoming strength.

[Lando]

it would suck to have a pome, an apple, pear etc... stuck inside your body!

[myownsatellite]

I really liked the first poem. The second one is a bit wordy for me - maybe less of the word "systems" and "grandma" - I think the repetition of those words weighs a little heavily on the flow of the poem and make it harder to read.

I can tell a lot of work went into these - I'm glad you're making progress from rejections to "resubmit when these things are fixed" - I wish I could get that kind of response. Sadly, I'm still in the rejection phase.

[beautiful liar]

I really liked the first poem. The second one is a bit wordy for me - maybe less of the word "systems" and "grandma" - I think the repetition of those words weighs a little heavily on the flow of the poem and make it harder to read.

I can tell a lot of work went into these - I'm glad you're making progress from rejections to "resubmit when these things are fixed" - I wish I could get that kind of response. Sadly, I'm still in the rejection phase.

Thank you!

The whole point of the second poem is the repetition; I worked within a system of lexical items in order to make the reading heavy and awkward. It's a fun poem to perform though - it's crazy to see reactions at readings. This is the poem that is turning into my pet project, and will probably be book length when I'm through with it.

I'm sure you'll get a more positive response if you keep submitting your work. There are so many different literary magazines to try. It's taken forever to get one letter asking for resubmission, and I'm still convinced that it's a psych-out, that I'll resubmit and they'll reject it.

[beautiful liar]

it would suck to have a pome, an apple, pear etc... stuck inside your body!

bp Nichol apparently had pomes inside various body parts, so he wrote a poem about it.

[Lando]

:O

[Johnny]

Pomes sounds like its some type of horse breed.



Lando knows what I'm talking about!

[beautiful liar]

while i've stopped posting my own poetry online, i am now blogging about other people's poetry.

check it out if you want to!

it's also in my sig now, but i know no one ever clicks on sigs