CTAO 210 Interpretative Reading
Page 1 of 34
Poem
Author
Page
Flying
Mary Oliver
3
Fabric of Life
Kay Ryan
3
Broccoli
Tom Schmidt
3
To Some Supposed Brothers
Essex Hemphill
4
Hanging Fire
Audre Lord
4
Poem About My Rights
June Jordan
5-6
Death Camp
Irena Klepfisz
7
Letter to a Dead Father
Richard Shelton
7
Barbie Doll
Marge Piercy
8
The Lost Baby Poem
Lucille Clifton
8
The Applicant
Sylvia Plath
9
Unwanted
Edward Field
10
Napa California
Ana Castillo
11
In Response to Executive Order
9066: All Americans of Japanese
Descent Must Report to
Relocation Centers
Dwight Okita
12
Poetry Packet
CTAO 210 Interpretative Reading
Page 2 of 34
Poetry Packet
Poem
Author
Page
Poem
Author
Page
Upon Learning that a Junior
High School Acquaintance Has
Been Nominated for an
Academy Award
Joanne Gilbert
13
Fo Dizz
Shirley Bradley
Leflore
23
D.O.A.
Todd Swift
24
Her Story
Naomi Long
Madgett
14
Looking for Indians
Cheryl Savageau
24
The Bridge Poem
Careful What You Ask For
Jack McCarthy
Donna Kate
Rushin
14-15
25
Chicks up Front
Sara Holbrook
26-27
For My Lover Returning to His
Wife
Anne Sexton
15-16
The Scalping
Daniel Fern
27-28
The Race
Sharon Olds
17-18
Pull the Next One Up
Marc SMith
29
(untitled)
e.e. cummings
18
Every Element is Relevant
Marlon O. Carey
29-30
The Archipelago of Kisses
Jeffrey Mcdaniel
19
Regina
Lisa Buscani
30-31
My Mother and the Bed
Lyn Lifshin
20
Carolina
Derek Brown
32
He is Reserved
Yevgeny
Yevtushenko
20
First Period
Kevin Derrig
33-34
Never Offer Your Heart to
Someone Who Eats Hearts
Alice Walker
21
You Ask Me Why / Self Portrait
Kate Herseth Wee
21-22
Mother to Son
Langston Hughes
22
Haikukoos
Victor Hernandez
Cruz
22-23
CTAO 210 Interpretative Reading
Page 3 of 34
Flying
The Fabric of Life
by: Mary Oliver
by Kay Ryan
Sometimes,
on a plane,
you see a stranger.
He is so beautiful!
His nose
going down in the
old Greek way,
or his smile
a wild
Mexican fiesta.
You want to say:
do you know
how beautiful you are?
You leap up
into the aisle,
you can’t let him go
until he has touched you
shyly, until you have rubbed him,
oh, lightly,
like a coin
you find on the earth somewhere
shining and unexpected and,
without thinking,
reach for. You stand there
shaken
by the strangeness,
the splash of his touch.
When he’s gone
you stare like an animal into
the blinding clouds
with the snapped chain of your
life,
the life you know:
It is very stretchy.
We know that, even if
many details remain
sketchy. It is complexly
woven. That much too
has pretty well been
proven. We are loath
to continue our lessons
which consist of slaps
as sharp and dispersed
as bee stings from
a smashed nest
when any strand snaps—
hurts working far past
the locus of rupture,
attacking threads
far beyond anything
we would have said
connects.
Poetry Packet
Broccoli
Tom Schmidt
Is my favorite vegetable
Often i sit at home alone
eating broccoli
Once in a dream
I took this Italian girl
to a large out door market,
with broccoli filling every stall
I bought her bouquets of broccoli
everywhere until she disappeared
behind a lovely green pillar
of broccoli
Later we were in a park,
kissed in secret thickets, in the warm
rocks
beside the blinding river,
until she disappeared
behind a lovely green pillar
of broccoli
Sometimes in the morning
I look in the mirror
and see my straight brown hair
gone to tight green knots
My limbs grow oddly sinuous
even crunchy
My broccoli love
grows larger than the world
My budding heart swells,
ready to burst clusters
of yellow flame against
the clear sky
CTAO 210 Interpretative Reading
To Some Supposed Brothers
Essex Hemphill
You judge a woman
by the length of her skirt,
by the way she walks,
talks,looks, and acts;
by the color of her skin you judge
and will call her “bitch!”
“Black bitch!”
if she doesn’t answer your:
“Hey baby, whatcha gonna say
to a man?”
You judge a woman
by the job she holds,
by the number of children she had,
by the number of digits on her check;
by the many men she may have lain
with
and wonder what jive murphy
you’ll run in her this time.
You tell a woman
every poetic love line
you can think of,
then like a desperate needle
of a strung out junkie
you plunge into her veins,
travel wild through her blood,
confuse her mind, make her hate
and be cold to the men to come,
Page 4 of 34
Hanging Fire
destroying the thread of calm
she held.
You judge a woman
by what she can do for you alone
but there’s no need
for slaves to have slaves.
You judge a woman
by the impressions you think you’ve
made.
Ask and she gives,
take without asking,
beat on her and she’ll obey,
throw her name up and down the
streets
like some loose whistleknowing her neighbors will talk.
Her friends will chew her name.
Her family’s blood will run loose
like a broken creek.
a woman is left
healing her wounds alone.
But we so called men
we so-called brothers
wonder why it’s so hard
to love our woman
when we’re about loving
them the way america
loves us.
Poetry Packet
by: Audre Lord
I am fourteen
and my skin has betrayed me
the boy I cannot live without
still sucks his thumb
in secret
how come my knees are
always so ashy.
what if I die
before morning
and momma’s in the bedroom
with the door closed.
I have to learn how to dance
in time for the next party
my room is too small for me
suppose I die before graduation
they will sing sad melodies
but finally
tell the truth about me
There is nothing I want to do
and too much
that has to be done
and momma’s in the bedroom
with the door closed.
Nobody even stops to think
about my side of it
I should have been on the MAth
Team
my marks were better than his
why do I have to be
the one
wearing braces
I have nothing to wear tomorrow
will I live long enough
to grow up
and momma’s in the bedroom
with the door closed.
CTAO 210 Interpretative Reading
Page 5 of 34
Poetry Packet
Poem About My Rights
June Jordon
Angola and does that mean I mean how do you know if
Even tonight and I need to take a walk and clear
proof of the monster jackboot ejaculation on Blackland
my head about this poem about why I can’t
and if
go out without changing my clothes my shoes
after Namibia and if after Angola and if after Zimbabwe
my body posture my gender identity my age
and if after all of my kinsmen and women resist even to
my status as a woman alone in the evening/
self-immolation of the villages and if after that
alone on the streets/alone not being the point/
we lose nevertheless what will the big boys say will they
the point being that I can’t do what I want
claim my consent:
to do with my own body because I am the wrong
Do You Follow Me: We are the wrong people of
sex the wrong age the wrong skin and
the wrong skin on the wrong continent and what
suppose it was not here in the city but down on the beach/
in the hell is everybody being reasonable about
or far into the woods and I wanted to go
and according to the Times this week
there by myself thinking about God/or thinking
back in 1966 the C.I.A. decided that they had this problem
about children or thinking about the world/all of it
and the problem was a man named Nkrumah so they
disclosed by the stars and the silence:
killed him and before that it was Patrice Lumumba
I could not go and I could not think and I could not
and before that it was my father on the campus
stay there
of my Ivy League school and my father afraid
alone
to walk into the cafeteria because he said he
as I need to be
was wrong the wrong age the wrong skin the wrong
alone because I can’t do what I want to do with my own
gender identity and he was paying my tuition and
body and
before that
who in the hell set things up
it was my father saying I was wrong saying that
like this
I should have been a boy because he wanted one/a
and in France they say if the guy penetrates
boy and that I should have been lighter skinned and
Pretoria ejaculates what will the evidence look like the
CTAO 210 Interpretative Reading
Page 6 of 34
workers and my particular Mom and Dad/I am very
the wrong sartorial I
familiar with the problems because the problems
I have been the meaning of rape
turn out to be
I have been the problem everyone seeks to
me
eliminate by forced
I am the history of rape
penetration with or without the evidence of slime and/
I am the history of the rejection of who I am
but let this be unmistakable this poem
I am the history of the terrorized incarceration of
is not consent I do not consent
myself
to my mother to my father to the teachers to
I am the history of battery assault and limitless
the F.B.I. to South Africa to Bedford-Stuy
armies against whatever I want to do with my mind
to Park Avenue to American Airlines to the hardon
and my body and my soul and
idlers on the corners to the sneaky creeps in
whether it’s about walking out at night
cars
or whether it’s about the love that I feel or
I am not wrong: Wrong is not my name
whether it’s about the sanctity of my vagina or
My name is my own my own my own
the sanctity of my national boundaries
and I can’t tell you who the hell set things up like this
or the sanctity of my leaders or the sanctity
but I can tell you that from now on my resistance
of each and every desire
my simple and daily and nightly self-determination
that I know from my personal and idiosyncratic
may very well cost you your life
Poetry Packet
and indisputably single and singular heart
I have been raped
June Jordan, “Poem About My Rights” from Directed By Desire: The Collected
be-
Poems of June Jordan (Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press, 2005).
cause I have been wrong the wrong sex the wrong age
Copyright © 2005 by The June M. Jordan Literary Trust.
the wrong skin the wrong nose the wrong hair the
wrong need the wrong dream the wrong geographic
Poem About My Rights - instructor notes:
female author, Black, born in Harlem in 1936
CTAO 210 Interpretative Reading
Death Camp
by: Irena Klepfisz
when they took us
to the shower I saw
the rebbitzin her sagging breasts sparse
pubic hairs
i knew and remembered
the old rebbe and turned
my eyes away
i could still hear
her advice
a woman
with a husband
a scholar
when they turned
on the gas
i smelled
it first coming at me pressed myself
hard to the wall crying
rebbitzin
rebbitzin
I am here with you
and the advice you gave me
i screamed
into the wall as the blood burst from
my lungs cracking her nails in women’s flesh i watched
her capsize beneath me my blood in her mouth i scream
when they dragged my body into the oven i burned
slowly at first i could smell my own flesh and could
hear them grunt
with the weight of the rebbitzin
and they flung her on top
of me and i could smell
her hair burning
against my stomach
when I pressed through the chimney
it was sunny and dear
my smoke
was distinct i rose quiet
left her
beneath
Page 7 of 34
Poetry Packet
Letter to a Dead Father by: Richard Shelton
Five year since you died and I am
better than I was when you were living.
The years have not been wasted.
I have heard the harsh voices
of desert birds who canno sing.
Sometimes I touched the membrane between violence and
desire
and watched it vibrate.
I learned that a man
who travels in circles never arrives at exactly the same
place.
I you could see me now
side-stepping triumph and disaster.
still waiting for you to say my son
my beloved son. If you could only see
me now, you would know I am stronger.
Death was the poorest subterfuge
you ever managed, but it was permanent.
Do you see now tht fathers who cannot love their sons
have sons who cannot love?
It was not your fault
and it was not mine. I needed
your love but I recovered without it.
Now I no longer need anything.
CTAO 210 Interpretative Reading
Barbie Doll by: Marge Piercy
This girlchild was born as usual
and presented dolls that did pee-pee
and miniature GE stoves and irons
and wee lipsticks the color of cherry candy.
Then in the magic of puberty, a classmate said:
You have a great big nose and fat legs.
She was healthy, tested intelligent,
possessed strong arms and back,
abundant sexual drive and manual dexterity.
She went to and fro apologizing.
Everyone saw a fat nose on thick legs.
She was advised to play coy,
exhorted to come on hearty,
exercise, diet, smile and wheedle.
Her good nature wore out
like a fan belt.
So she cut off her nose and her legs
and offered them up.
In the casket displayed on satin she lay
with the undertaker's cosmetics painted on,
a turned-up putty nose,
dressed in a pink and white nightie.
Doesn't she look pretty? everyone said.
Consummation at last.
To every woman a happy ending.
Page 8 of 34
The Lost Baby Poem
by: Lucille Clifton
the time i dropped your almost body down
down to meet the waters under the city
and run one with the sewage to the sea
what did i know about waters rushing back
what did i know about drowning
or being drowned
you would have been born in winter
in the year of the disconnected gas
and no car
we would have made the thin walk
over the genecy hill into the canada winds
to let you slip into a stranger's hands
if you were here i could tell you
these and some other things
and if i am ever less than a mountain
for your definite brothers and sisters
let the rivers wash over my head
let the sea take me for a spiller of seas
let black men call me stranger always
for your never named sake
Poetry Packet
CTAO 210 Interpretative Reading
The Applicant
by: Sylvia Plath
First, are you our sort of a person?
Do you wear
A glass eye, false teeth or a crutch,
A brace or a hook,
Rubber breasts or a rubber crotch,
Stitches to show something's missing? No, no? Then
How can we give you a thing?
Stop crying.
Open your hand.
Empty? Empty. Here is a hand
To fill it and willing
To bring teacups and roll away headaches
And do whatever you tell it.
Will you marry it?
It is guaranteed
To thumb shut your eyes at the end
And dissolve of sorrow.
We make new stock from the salt.
I notice you are stark naked.
How about this suit----
Page 9 of 34
Poetry Packet
Black and stiff, but not a bad fit.
Will you marry it?
It is waterproof, shatterproof, proof
Against fire and bombs through the roof.
Believe me, they'll bury you in it.
Now your head, excuse me, is empty.
I have the ticket for that.
Come here, sweetie, out of the closet.
Well, what do you think of that ?
Naked as paper to start
But in twenty-five years she'll be silver,
In fifty, gold.
A living doll, everywhere you look.
It can sew, it can cook,
It can talk, talk , talk.
It works, there is nothing wrong with it.
You have a hole, it's a poultice.
You have an eye, it's an image.
My boy, it's your last resort.
Will you marry it, marry it, marry it.
source: Volume: The Collected Poems
Year: Published/Written in 1962
found on amercianpoems.com website
CTAO 210 Interpretative Reading
Unwanted
Edward Field
The poster with my picture on it
Is hanging on the bulletin board in the Post Office.
I stand by it hoping to be recognized
Posing first full face and then profile
But everybody passes by and I have to admit
The photograph was taken some years ago.
I was unwanted then and I'm unwanted now
Ah guess ah'll go up echo mountain and crah.
I wish someone would find my fingerprints somewhere
Maybe on a corpse and say, You're it.
Description: Male, or reasonably so
White, but not lily-white and usually deep-red
Thirty-fivish, and looks it lately
Five-feet-nine and one-hundred-thirty pounds: no
physique
Black hair going gray, hairline receding fast
What used to be curly, now fuzzy
Brown eyes starey under beetling brow
Mole on chin, probably will become a wen.
Page 10 of 34 Poetry Packet
It is perfectly obvious that he was not popular at school
No good at baseball and wet his bed
His aliases tell his history: Dumbell, Good-for-nothing,
Jewboy, Fieldinsky, Skinny, Fierce Face, Greaseball, Sissy.
Warning: This man is not dangerous, answers to any name
Responds to love, don't call him or he will come.
CTAO 210 Interpretative Reading
Napa California
Dedicado al Sr. Chaʼvez, spet. 75
Ana Castillo
We pick
the bittersweet grapes
at harvest
one
by
one
with leather worn hands
as they pick
at our dignity
and wipe our pride
away
like the seat we wipe
from our sun-beaten brows
at midday
In fields
so vast
that our youth seems
to pass before us
and we have grown
very
very
old
by dusk . . . Page 11 of 34 Poetry Packet
(buenos pues, ?queʼ vamos a hacer, Amrioso?
!bueno pues, seguirle, compadre, seguirle!
!Ay, Mama!
Si pues, ?queʼ vamos a hacer, compadre?
!Seguirle, Ambrosio, sueguirle!)
We pick
with a desire
that only survival
inspires
While the end
of each day only brings
a tired night
that waits for the sun
and the land
that in turn waits
for us . . .
taken from American Mosaic: Multicultural Readings In
Context, 2nd Ed. Editors Rico & Mano
CTAO 210 Interpretative Reading
In Response to Executive Order 9066: All Americans
of Japanese Descent Must Report to Relocation
Centers
by: Dwight Okita
Dear Sirs:
Of course Iʼll come. Iʼve packed my galoshes
and three packets of tomato seeds. Denise calls them
“love apples.” My father says where weʼre going
they wonʼt grow.
I am a fourteen year old girl with bad spelling
and a messy room. If it helps any, I will tell you
I have always felt funny using chopsticks
and my favorite food is hot dogs.
My best friend is a white girl named Denisewe look at boys together. She sat in front of me
all through grades school because of our names:
OʼConnor; Ozawa. I know the back of Deniseʼs
head very well.
I tell her sheʼs going bald. She tells me I copy
on tests.
Weʼre best friends.
I saw Denise today in Geography class.
She was sitting on th other side of the room.
“Youʼre trying to start a war,” she said, “giving secrets
away
Page 12 of 34 Poetry Packet
to the Enemy, Why canʼt you keep you big mouth
shut?”
I didnʼt know what to say.
I gave her a packet of tomato seeds
and asked her to plant them for me, told her
when the first tomato ripened
sheʼd miss me.
CTAO 210 Interpretative Reading
Upon Learning that a Junior High School Acquaintance
Has Been Nominated for an Academy Award
by Joanne Gilbert
Ungainly in candy-striped pajamas as a Who
from whom the Grinch stole Christmas
temporarilyshe wasn;t that memorable.
Tonight, same frizz of hair,
same awkward gait,
with much of the world wathcing,
she apparently is.
When I first started to see her in movies,
I wanted to
clench the screen,
tear
great
gobs
from her facing, shouting,
“It’s not fair!
It should be me!”
Cool rationality turned
my sour grapes to
sour wine and
I plotted her public embarrasment:
I would send our Junior High School Yearbook to
The National Inquirer (anonymously, of course)
so the world could feast its eyes on her
Page 13 of 34 Poetry Packet
chubby, orthodontic countenance.
Meanwhile, I worried I’d
run into her at her films,
remaining invisible,
glowering
as she misremembered me.
Tonight she wears outrageous earrings and floats among
the
privileged
eyes the golden statuette,
smiles benignly,
never once recalling
I live.
Chatting with heroes, this Amazon has no idea I know
her battle scar
a cyst on her egg sac- the whole untimely ripped at her
ripeningfront cover material
most definitely.
The envelope please. . .
es me because it
does not grant
her wish.
An eye for an eye;
I am satisfied.
I was teased more than she, after all.
Justice as the camera-still trained on her - reveals nothing
It is right; she was only a Who I was the narrator.
CTAO 210 Interpretative Reading
Her Story
by: Naomi Long Madgett
They gave me the wrong name, in the first place
They named me Grace and waited for a light and agile
dancer
But instead I turned out big and black and burly.
IN the second place, I fashioned the wrong dreams.
I anted to dress like Juliet and act
Before applauding audiences on broadway.
I learned more about Shakespeare than he know about
himself.
But of course, all that was impossible.
“talent, yes,”they would tell me,
“But an actress has to look the part.”
So I ended up waiting on tables in Harlem
And hearing uncouth men yell at me:
“Hey momma, you can cancel that hamburger
And come on up to 102.”
In the third place, I tried the wrong solution.
The stuff I drank made me deathly sick
And someone called a doctor.
Next time Iʼll try a gun.
Page 14 of 34 The Bridge Poem
Poetry Packet
by Donna Kate Rushin
I've had enough
I'm sick of seeing and touching
Both sides of things
Sick of being the damn bridge for everybody
Nobody
Can talk to anybody
Without me Right?
I explain my mother to my father my father to my little sister
My little sister to my brother my brother to the white feminists
The white feminists to the Black church folks the Black church folks
To the Ex-hippies the ex-hippies to the Black separatists the
Black separatists to the artists the artists to my friends' parents...
Then
I've got the explain myself
To everybody
I do more translating
Than the Gawdamn U.N.
Forget it
I'm sick of it
I'm sick of filling in your gaps
Sick of being your insurance against
The isolation of your self-imposed limitations
Sick of being the crazy at your holiday dinners
Sick of being the odd one at your Sunday Brunches
Sick of being the sole Black friend to 34 individual white people
CTAO 210 Interpretative Reading
Find another connection to the rest of the world
Find something else to make you legitimate
Find some other way to be political and hip
I will not be the bridge to your womanhood
Your manhood
Your human-ness
I'm sick of reminding you not to
Close off too tight for too long
I'm sick of mediating with your worst self
On behalf you your better selves
I am sick
Of having to remind you
To breathe
Before you suffocate
Your own fool self
Forget it
Stretch or drown
Evolve or die
The bridge I must be
Is the bridge to my own power
Page 15 of 34 Poetry Packet
I must translate
My own fears
Mediate
My own weaknesses
I must be the bridge to nowhere
But my true self
And then
I will be useful
-from This Bridge Called My Back
edited by: Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldua
New York: Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, 1983.
For My Lover Returning to His Wife by: Anne Sexton
She is all there.
She was melted carefully down for you
and cast up from your childhood,
cast up from your one hundred favorite aggies.
She has always been there, my darling.
She is, in fact, exquisite.
Fireworks in the dull middle of February
and as real as a cast-iron pot.
Let's face it, I have been momentary.
A luxury. A bright red sloop in the harbor.
CTAO 210 Interpretative Reading
My hair rising like smoke from the car window.
Littleneck clams out of season.
She is more than that. She is your have to have,
has grown you your practical your tropical growth.
This is not an experiment. She is all harmony.
She sees to oars and oarlocks for the dinghy,
has placed wild flowers at the window at breakfast,
sat by the potter's wheel at midday,
set forth three children under the moon,
three cherubs drawn by Michelangelo,
done this with her legs spread out
in the terrible months in the chapel.
If you glance up, the children are there
like delicate balloons resting on the ceiling.
She has also carried each one down the hall
after supper, their heads privately bent,
two legs protesting, person to person,
her face flushed with a song and their little sleep.
I give you back your heart.
I give you permission --
Page 16 of 34 Poetry Packet
for the fuse inside her, throbbing
angrily in the dirt, for the bitch in her
and the burying of her wound -for the burying of her small red wound alive -for the pale flickering flare under her ribs,
for the drunken sailor who waits in her left pulse,
for the mother's knee, for the stocking,
for the garter belt, for the call -the curious call
when you will burrow in arms and breasts
and tug at the orange ribbon in her hair
and answer the call, the curious call.
She is so naked and singular
She is the sum of yourself and your dream.
Climb her like a monument, step after step.
She is solid.
As for me, I am a watercolor.
I wash off.
CTAO 210 Interpretative Reading
The Race
by: Sharon Olds
Page 17 of 34 Poetry Packet
I who always go to the end of the line, I said Help me. He looked
at my ticket, he said
When I got to the airport I rushed up to the desk,
Make a left and then a right, go up the moving stairs and then
bought a ticket, ten minutes later
run. I lumbered up the moving stairs,
they told me the flight was cancelled, the doctors
at the top I saw the corridor,
had said my father would not live through the night
and then I took a deep breath, I said
and the flight was cancelled. A young man
goodbye to my body, goodbye to comfort,
with a dark brown moustache told me
I used my legs and heart as if I would
another airline had a nonstop
gladly use them up for this,
leaving in seven minutes. See that
to touch him again in this life. I ran, and the
elevator over there, well go
bags banged against me, wheeled and coursed
down to the first floor, make a right, you'll
in skewed orbits, I have seen pictures of
see a yellow bus, get off at the
women running, their belongings tied
second Pan Am terminal, I
in scarves grasped in their fists, I blessed my
ran, I who have no sense of direction
long legs he gave me, my strong
raced exactly where he'd told me, a fish
heart I abandoned to its own purpose,
slipping upstream deftly against
I ran to Gate 17 and they were
the flow of the river. I jumped off that bus with those
just lifting the thick white
bags I had thrown everything into
lozenge of the door to fit it into
in five minutes, and ran, the bags
the socket of the plane. Like the one who is not
wagged me from side to side as if
too rich, I turned sideways and
to prove I was under the claims of the material,
slipped through the needle's eye, and then
I ran up to a man with a flower on his breast,
I walked down the aisle toward my father. The jet
CTAO 210 Interpretative Reading
was full, and people's hair was shining, they were
smiling, the interior of the plane was filled with a
mist of gold endorphin light,
I wept as people weep when they enter heaven,
in massive relief. We lifted up
gently from one tip of the continent
and did not stop until we set down lightly on the
other edge, I walked into his room
and watched his chest rise slowly
and sink again, all night
I watched him breathe.
from The Father (Knopf, 1992)
Page 18 of 34 (untitled) 16
Poetry Packet
by e.e. cummings
Humanity I love you
because you would rather black the boots of
success than enquire whose soul dangles from his
watch-chain which would be embarassing for both
parties and because you
unflinchingly applaud all
songs containing the words country home and
mother when sung at the old howard
Humanity i love you because
when you’re hard up you pawn your
intelligence to buy a drink and when
you’re flush pride keeps
you from the pawn shop and
because you are continually committing
nuisances but more
especially in your own house
Humanity I love you because you
are perpetually putting hte secret of
life in your pants and forgetting
it’s there and sitting down
on it
and because you are
forever making poems in the lap
of death Humanity
i hate you
source: cummings. 100 selected poems. Grove Weidenfield, New
York City, 1954.
CTAO 210 Interpretative Reading
THE ARCHIPELAGO OF KISSES Jeffrey Mcdaniel
We live in a modern society. Husbands and wives don't
grow on tress, like in the old days. So where
does one find love? When you're sixteen it's easy,
like being unleashed with a credit card
in a department store of kisses. There's the first kiss.
The sloppy kiss. The peck.
The sympathy kiss. The backseat smooch. The we
shouldn't be doing this kiss. The but your lips
taste so good kiss. The bury me in an avalanche of tingles kiss.
The wish you'd quit smoking kiss.
The I accpet your apology, but you make me really mad
sometimes kiss. The I know
your tongue like the back of my had kiss. As you get older,
kisses become scarce. You'll be driving home and see a
damaged kiss on the side of the road,
with its purple thumb out. If you
were younger, you'd pull over, slide open the mouth's
red door just to see how it fits. Oh where
does one find love? If you rub two glances, you get a smile.
Rub two smiles, you get a warm feeling.
Page 19 of 34 Poetry Packet
Rub two warm feelings and presto-you have a kiss.
Now what? Don't invite the kiss over
and answer the door in your underwear. It'll get suspicious
and stare at your toes. Don't water the kiss with whiskey. It'll
turn bright
pink and explode into a thousand luscious splinters,
but in the morning it'll be ashamed and sneak out of
your body without saying good bye,
and you'll remember that kiss forever by all the little cuts it left
on the inside of your mouth. You must
nurture the kiss. Turn out the lights. Notice how it
illuminates the room. Hold it to your chest
and wonder if the sand inside hourglasses comes from a
special beach. Place it on the tongue's pillow,
then look up the first recorded kiss in an encyclopedia: beneath
a Babylonian olive tree in 1200 B.C.
But one kiss levitates above all the others. The
intersection of function and desire. The I do kiss.
The I'll love you through a brick wall kiss.
Even when I'm dead, I'll swim through the earth,
like a mermaid of the soil, just to be next to your bones.
CTAO 210 Interpretative Reading
My Mother and the Bed
by: Lyn Lifshin
no not that way she'd
say when I was 7 pulling
the bottom sheet smooth
you've got to saying
hospital corners
I wet the bed much later
than I should, until
just writing this I
hadn't thought of
the connection
My mother would never
sleep on sheets someone
else had I never
saw any stains on hers
though her bedroom was
a maze of powder hair
pins black dresses
Sometimes she brings her
own sheets to my house
carries toiletseat covers
Lyn did anybody sleep
in my she always asks
Her sheets her hair
smells of smoke she
says the rooms here
smell funny
Page 20 of 34 we drive at 3 AM
slow into Boston and
strip what looks like
two clean beds as the
sky gets light I
I
smooth on the form
fitted flower bottom
she redoes it
She thinks of my life
as a bed only she
can make right
He is Reserved
by Yevgeny Yevtushenko
He is reserved,
my friend,
he is terribly reserved.
He is driven inward on himself,
the lid has shut down on him,
on the dark depths of his sadness,
like a wall
and his thoughts are bashing against
the lid
and his fists are smashed by it.
Poetry Packet
He won’t tell his troubles to anyone,
He won’t so them out in a rush,
tonelessly everything piles up in him,
and I am afraid
there will be an explosion.
But there is no explosion,
only sigh,
after sigh like a peasant woman burying her tears
in a haystack
like a convulsive sob of the sea
against the dusky, wet boulders.
I used to be so open, completely open.
I didn’t hold myself back from anything,
and for that I was ditched by fate
as though by a mocking woman.
And I’m tired.
I have become reserved.
I’ve stopped being trusting.
At times wen I’ve been drinking
I catch myself at the point of explosion,
but there is no explosion.
only a sigh
and another sigh,
like the convulsive sob of the sea
against the dusky, wet boulders.
My old friend,
my unsociable one,
let us sit down, as before.
Let us fill up glasses to each other,
to sighnow together...
CTAO 210 Interpretative Reading
Never Offer Your Heart to Someone
who Eats Hearts
by: Alice Walker
these things
Never offer your heart
to someone who eats hearts
who find heartmeat
delicious
but not rare
who sucks the juices
drop by drop
and bloody-chinned
grins
like a God.
Never offer your heart
to a heart gravy lover.
Your stewed, overseasoned
heart consumed
he will sop up your grief
with bread
and send it shuttling
from side to side
in his mouth
like bubblegum.
If you find yourself
in love
with a person
who eats hearts
Freeze your heart
Page 21 of 34 you must do.
immediately,
Let him—next time
he examines your chest—
find your heart cold
flinty and unappetizing.
Refrain from kissing
lest he in revenge
dampen the spark
in your soul.
Now,
sail away to Africa
where holy women
await you
on the shore—
long having practiced the art
of replacing hearts
with God and Song.
Poetry Packet
You Ask Me Why / Self Portrait
by: Karen Herseth Wee
You ask me why I am
the way I am
I cannot tell you
I cannot tell you
how I knew I was
a different child
would be a different woman
the farm
maybe it was the farm
a first child
in all that space
no fences
a white horse was mine at ten
like int he fairytales
She threw every boy
who ever tried to ride her
so fast
she threw them turning
But I rode bareback
no bridle
leapt off on a whim
She didnʼt even have to stop
for my getting off
Once her flying hoof
caught the arch of my foot
as I slid to the dirt
CTAO 210 Interpretative Reading
and lit running. . .
Maybe it was
that I as strong
muscled
could beat boys at all their games
drive a pickup faster
shoot a gun
stack hay all day
while my father rode the bucket
When someone
bad-mouthed my sister or brother
I bloodied them
I was proud to be
that kind of daughter
But Dad had trouble
seeing me a woman
my way of being woman
He liked his woman soft
precarious
on high heels
and in the kitchen
ambitious
but in his understanding
of ambitious woman
I knew I was a different child
would be a different woman
moccasined
out of step
and am
above all
loyal.
Page 22 of 34 Type to enter text Mother to Son
by: Langston Hughes
Type to enter text
Well, son, I’ll tell you:
Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
It had cracks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up
And places with no carpet on the floor -Bare.
But all the time
I’se been a-climbin’ on,
And reachin’ landin’s,
And turnin’ corners,
And sometimes goin’ in the dark
Where there ain’t been no light.
So boy, don’t you turn back.
Don’t you set down on the steps
‘Cause you find it kinder hard.
Don’t you fall now -For I’se still goin’, honey,
I’se still climbin’,
And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
Haikukoos
Poetry Packet
Victor Hernandez Cruz
City News 1
Wallet in pocket
Money stuffed like burrito
Look! gone man slices wind
City News 2
Into self-service
Elevator he goes smooth
Bang! Now stuck he hums
Legislator Sheet
Government talk shit
Then file it in office jobs
Everyone flushed
Andalusian Thought
Skirt of silk music
Woman sits back in darkness
Wait! Is she naked?
City News 3
All morning he heard
Screwdriver making hall sounds
Mailbox! now he thinks
CTAO 210 Interpretative Reading
Movement of Molasses
Men argue honor
While twenty blocks away their
women train horsies
Textile
She wear the pants red-dish and tight what is underneath nature hills fly
Iota
A roach from Colombia has enough legs and
walks the ocean back
For Dizz
Shirley Bradley Leflore
There is a man singin under my skin
Like a gourd/song w/a cleare/voice
SInging the silk of a hummin/bird deep/
throat
In the silver/blades of holy/glass
There is a man singin under my skin
like a drum/choir/wind/jammin/my bluz/
spot
Blowin the dust off my wings
Siftin The texture of my nature Rich &
Mahogony
B'tween long chantin fingers
Pluckin out my ruptured nerve
Page 23 of 34 Restringing me
There is a man singin under my skin
like a brass/band/breast/strokin/my/
winds
Movin w/a be/bop/eye/scattin/on/these/
hants
Charin/these/cotties/puttin/some/
rhythm/on/these/blu/
notes
Swingin/low on a sweet/chariot
makin my spirit rise
Like a poet chewin on a sonnet
Rearranging my score
There is a man singing
under my skin dancin
A dancin/man under my skin w/a
Boogie/woogie/ear
Layin down a gypsy/string/bassline
Vampin in a brass/blend
Sun/dancin me gold like a mississippi/
yam
doin the kooka/rhaacha w/a hoochie/
coo
Like a soulful bambouli
A dancin/man w/a whole sahara of
tambourines
stringin a gospel/pearl
B'tween my rapture and my rupture
B'tween my hants and my harmony
Reconnectin my nerves/my/muscles/my
bones w/a
Soprano tongue turnin my brassbones
in/to rainbows
Poetry Packet
This man/this singin/this dancin/under/
my/skin
has/broke/n'/my/silence
LOUD...................
OUT/
CTAO 210 Interpretative Reading
D.O.A
Todd Swift
I would like to report a love affair
that is very over. My own.
Her luminous poison is all through my system.
I've been running through busy streets like doom,
my silk tie flying over my shoulder,
knocking the fedoras off completely strange men,
not noticing the runs up the legs of secretaries,
skewed hems, refusing to pay anyone
for rides on the trolley cars, going up and down.
My heart has the limited life span
of a May fly. It's due to explode anytime now,
and when it does I will immediately die.
The Grim Reaper's got me on a very short leash
so short it feels I've been unleashed by him.
I have twenty-four hours, maybe a week
to find the guy who did this to me
and settle my accounts. I want information.
Give it to me straight, Doc. Every second counts.
Talk! Could anything toxic in my bloodstream
have come from something as nice and red
as my gal's lipstick? There's gotta be
a better explanation. Her kiss is her alibi.
Sure, that's it. Fate's had it in for me, ever since
I got here, already lonely and walking dead.
LOOKING FOR INDIANS
Cheryl Savageau
My head filled with tv images
of cowboys, war bonnets and renegades,
I ask my father
what kind of Indian are we, anyway.
I want to hear Cheyenne, Apache, Sioux,
Page 24 of 34 words I know from television
but he says instead
Abenaki. I think he says Abernathy
like the man in the comic strip
and I know that's not an Indian.
I follow behind him
in the garden
trying to step in his exact footprints,
stretching my stride to his.
His back is brown in the sun
and sweaty. My skin is brown
too, today, deep in midsummer,
but never as brown as his.
I follow behind him like this
from May to September
dropping seeds in the ground,
watering the tender shoots
tasting the first tomatoes,
plunging my arm as he does,
deep into the mounded earth
beneath the purple-flowered plants
to feel for potatoes
big enough to eat.
I sit inside the bean tepee
and pick the smallest ones
to munch on. He tests
the corn for ripeness
with a fingernail, it's dried silk
to color my mother's hair.
We watch the winter squash grow hips.
This is what we do together
in summer, besides the fishing
that fills our plates unfailingly
when money is short.
Poetry Packet
CTAO 210 Interpretative Reading
One night
my father brings in a book,
and shows me the map
here and here
he says, all this
is Abenaki country.
I remember asking him
what did they do
these grandparents
and my disappointment
when he said no buffalo
roamed the thick new england forest
they hunted deer in the winter
sometimes moose, but mostly
they were farmers
and fishermen.
I didn't want to talk about it.
Each night my father
came home from the factory
to plant and gather,
to cast the line out
over the dark evening pond,
with me, walking behind him,
looking for Indians.
CAREFUL WHAT YOU ASK FOR
Jack McCarthy
I was just old enough
to be out on the sidewalk by myself,
and every day I would come home crying,
beaten up by the same little girl.
I was Jackie, the firstborn, the apple of every eye.
Page 25 of 34 Poetry Packet
Gratuitous meanness bewildered me,
and as soon as she'd hit me I'd bawl like a baby.
I knew that boys were not supposed to cry,
but they weren't supposed to hit girls either,
and I was shocked when my father said "Hit her back."
I thought it sounded like a great idea,
but the only thing I remember about that girl today
is the look that came over her face after I hit her back.
She didn't cry; instead her eyes got narrow and I thought,
"Jackie, you just made a terrible mistake,"
and she really beat the crap out of me.
It was years before I trusted my father's advice again.
I eventually learned to fight-enough to protect myself-from girls-but the real issue was the crying, and that hasn't gone away.
Not that I actually cry any more:
I don't sob, I don't mae noise,
I just have hairtrigger tearducts,
and always at all the wrong things:
supermarket openings,
the mayor cutting ribbon on the bridge.
In movies I despise the easy manipulation
that never even bothers to engage my feelings
it goes straight for my eyes;
even though I can see it coming
there's not a damned thing I can do about it,
and I hate myself for it.
The surreptitious noseblow
a discreet four minutes after the operative scene.
My daughters are on to me, my wife.
They know exactly when to give me
that quick sidelong glance.
What must they think of me?
CTAO 210 Interpretative Reading
In real life I don't cry when things hurt;
never a tear at seventeen when my mother died
or my father; I never cried for my first marriage.
But today I often cry at happy parts-an unexpected act of simple human decency;
new evidence of how much someone loves me.
I think all this is why I never wanted a son.
I always supposed my son would be like me
and that when he'd cry it would bring back
every indelible humiliation of my own life,
and in some word or gesture I'd betray,
and he'd mistake and think I was ashamed of him,
and he'd carry that the rest of his life.
Daughters are easy: you pick them up,
you hug them, you say
"There, There. It's all right.
Everything is going to be all right."
And for that moment, you really believe
that you can make enough of it right
enough. The unskilled labor of love.
And if you cry with them for all
the inevitable gratuitous meanness of life,
that crying is not to be ashamed of.
But for years my great fear was the moment
I might have to deal with a crying son.
But I don't have one.
We came close once, between Megan and Kathleen.
The doctors warned us there was something wrong
and when Joan went into labor they said
the baby would be born dead. But he wasn't.
Very briefly before he died, I heard him cry.
Page 26 of 34 Chicks up Front
Poetry Packet
Sara Holbrook
Before and After,
we stand separate,
stuck to the same beer-soaked floor,
fragranced, facing the same restroom mirror.
Adjusting loose hairs-mine brown, hers purple.
Fumbling for lipsticks-mine pink, hers black-a color couldn't wear anyway
since that convention of lines
gathered around my mouth last year and won't leave.
We avoid eye contact,
both of us are afraid of being carded.
Mature, I suppose, I should speak,
but what can I say to the kind of hostility
that turns hair purple and lips black?
Excuse me, I know I never peirced my nose
but hey, I was revolting once too?
Back. Before I joined the PTA,
when wonder bras meant, "where'd I put that."
I rebelled against the government system,
the male-female system,
the corporate system, you name it.
I marched, I chanted, I demonstrated.
And when shit got passed around
I was there, sweetheart, and I inhaled.
Does she know the tear gas
makes your nose run worse than your eyes?
Would she believe that I was a volunteer
when they called, "Chicks up front,"
because no matter
what kind of hand-to-hand combat
the helmeted authoritarians may have been
engaged in at home,
they were still hesitant to hit girls
CTAO 210 Interpretative Reading
with batons in the streets.
"CHICKS UP FRONT!" and we marched and
we marched and we marched right back home.
Where we bore the children we were not going to bring into this
world, and we
brought them home to the houses we were never going to
wallpaper
in those Laura Ashley prints
and we took jobs with the corporate mongers
we were not going to let supervise our lives,
where we skyrocketed to
middle-management positions
accepting less money
than we were never going to take anyway
and spending it on the barbie dolls
we were not going to buy our daughters.
And after each party
for our comings and goings
we whisked the leftovers into dust pans,
debriefing and talking each other down
from the drugs and the me
as if they were different,
resuscitating one another as women do,
mouth to mouth.
That some of those we put up front
really did get beaten down
and others now bathe themeselves daily
in prozac to maintain former freshness.
Should I explain what edious work it is
putting role models together,
and how strategic pieces
sometimes get sucked up by this vacuum.
And while we intended to take
one giant leap for womankind,
I wound up taking one small step, alone.
Page 27 of 34 Poetry Packet
What can I say at that moment
when our eyes meet in the mirror
which they will.
what can I say to purple hair, black lips
and a nose ring?
What can I say?
Take Care.
The Scalping
Daniel Ferri
Lets get this straight from the start
I'm not whining
I'm just telling you
I have sat with a polite smile
While being flogged for every crim from neolithic patriarcal
warrior
society domination To leaving the toilet seat up
And many crimes in between
Because if I didn't do it, I might have done it, or looked like
someone who mighta'
thoughta' doin' it.
How insensitive of you
You know no who you pillory
For I am part of a vast legion
Who you, and the Sun, and the rain, and every cruel child and
cold wind
have
conspired to humiliate.
I am a bald guy.
Your smirk stands as proof of the insensitive piece of filth that
you are.
There is no sunburn like that on the top of my head
There is no polite way to wera my hat in the house when some
CTAO 210 Interpretative Reading
Page 28 of 34 Poetry Packet
conversation crazed member of the
hair dominant culture callously cranks the thermostat so
damn low,
or turns the fan blasting like the propeller of a Florida swamp
boat
aimed directly at my
bare and shivering skull.
You cannot know the pain that a bald guy feels
when he bumps his head.
and you cannot resist smirking at the band-aid.
sell you a product.
One second to show who the fool is
so make em' bald, ---no one can miss that
There is a conspiracy against us--yes there is
Billions of dollars are spent each year
to degrade me
Millions of hours spent listening
Wide eyed
Open mouthed
Blank faced
to the follicle fascists
Accepting ---- Embracing
Television's version of what bald guys are.
Hey, T.V.'s got to tell you quickly who the fool is
Who doesn't know what to buy,
what to wear
how to dress
what to hear
where to go,
how to get there,
Or in what
They've got 30 seconds to tell their little story
And your attention span is less than three
No more Mr. Nice Guy
No more shamed faced shuffle
No more tight lipped smile
No More Uncle Fester
I mean it
One more snicker outa you and I'll be up your ass with your
own medicine
like a Rogaine enema
The gloves will be off
So quick
One second to show who the fool is
And 29 for the happy haired slim lovely lady to set his ass
straight and
One-last-thing
I must warn you about the jokes
Ya, you know who you are
and so do I
So you just watch your hairy ass
Nothing will be off limits
No saggy tit is sacred
No big butt, no thunder thigh
No nose, no birthmark will escape my remark
Oh yeah,
Well what's the difference
People been figuring it's their business to mock my appearance,
About my hair's diss.......appearance since I was 19 years old.
And don't tell me you were, "just kidding."
Don't you even dare
I'll grab you by your forty five dollar haircut and lift you up until
your eyes pop out
I might just take your scalp
and wear it on my belt...
As a warning.
CTAO 210 Interpretative Reading
Pull the Next One Up
by: Marc Smith
When you get to the top of the mountain
Pull the next one up.
Then there'll be two of you
Roped together at the waist
Tired and proud, knowing the mountain,
Knowing the human force it took
to bring both of you there.
And when the second one has finished
taking in the view,
satisfied by the heat and perspiration under the wool
Let her pull the next one up.
Man or Woman, climber of mountains.
Pull the next hand over
the last jagged rock
to become three.
Two showing what they've already seen.
And one knowing the well-being with being
finished with one mountain,
with being able to look out a long way
other mountains.
feeling the temptation to claim victory
as if mountains were human toys to own.
When you ask how high is this mountain
with a compulsion to know
where you stand in relationship to other peaks,
Look down to wherefrom you came up
And see the rope that's tied to your waist
tied to the next man's waist
Tied to the next woman's waist,
Tied to the first man's waist,
To the first woman's waist,
...and pull the rope!
Never mind the flags you see flapping on conquered pinnacles.
Don't waste time scratching inscriptions into the monolith.
Page 29 of 34 Poetry Packet
You are the stone itself.
And each man, each woman up the mountain,
Each breath exhaled at the peak,
Each glad-I-made it...here's-my-hand,
Each heartbeat wrapped around the hot skin
of the sun-bright sky.
Each noise painted or cracked with laughter,
Each embrace, each cloud that holds everyone
in momentary doubt...
All these are inscriptions of a human force that can
Conquer conquering hand over hand pulling the rope
Next man up, next woman up,
Sharing a place, sharing a vision.
Room enough for all on all the mountain peaks
Force enough for all
To hold all the hanging bodies
dangling in the deep recesses of the mountain's belly
steady...until they have the courage...
Until they know the courage...
Until they understand
That the only courage there is is
to pull the next man up,
Pull the next woman up,
pull the next up...Up...Up.
Every Element is Relevant
by: Marlon O. Carey
Every element is relevant
And significant
Like a herd of African elephants
Marching slowly through the tenements
Or similar to seeds submerged in sediment
I eventually emerge to serve as evidence
A phantom menace
like my lame ass ex-girlfriend
CTAO 210 Interpretative Reading
who attempted to insult my intelligence
but she merely a victim of her parents' inherited prejudice
and furthermore she was jealous of this
My apparent penchant for dispensing sentences
with relentless effortlessness
but nevertheless
Now I am independent
and reluctant to discuss those tragic events
I used to stay bent to prevent myself from venting these
sentiments
But now any regimen includes a true testament of my existence
Engineered with elegance and executed with eloquence
I'm on a quest for exellence
And rather than follow trends
I'd rather set precedents
like maybe the first Jamaican-born American
Elected president
but EVERY ELEMENT IS RELEVANT
So now I'm
Constantly counting on consonants
trying to crack the constraints of cold cement
This is more than just a lyrical experiment
This is mental medicine I'm dispensing
inside your minds
I'm fencing with ignorance
Hoping I get a chance to display it
and replace it with statements like:
EVERY ELEMENT IS RELEVANT
you can't erase if you don' face your latent racism
So now I'm searching for those subtle similarities
Between myself and the Chinamen in Tiananmen
or lower class lesbian ladies living in Lebanon
And I'm finding them
wedged between the cracks
Embedded in the lies they tell me about my melanin
To hell with them!
Racism war and corrupted governments
All that I can recommend is to keep peace prevalent
and climb the mountaintops
Page 30 of 34 Poetry Packet
and keep on telling them that EVERY ELEMENT IS RELEVENT
So while you're strolling through the tenements
pondering those sacred elephants remember this
I hate to sound repetitive
but every bit of our existence
is compounded by essential percentages
of positive and negative so let it live
Blood bones and brain matter we are all relatives
and all relevant and all heaven sent
and all majestic instances of intesity
We are all meant to be mingling here amid indents at ease
subjects suggestively strapped to our predicates
we are all delicate
and all dedicated to the liberation of all continents
So keep this thought prominent
Memorize its every consonant
No matter what persuasion you may happen to represent
Black, White, Latino, Asian
affluent or indigent
EVERY ELEMENT IS RELEVANT
Regina
by: Lisa Buscani
Her hair fell into a careful, careless curl,
the acid that forced it to relax
a momentary inconvenience.
Her breasts were padded with wishes and pictures,
saying nurture and wonder,
saying lifeline and spotlight,
saying comfort and fortune.
Her firm, many ankles
alternated between best feature
and biggest give-away.
The tips of her spikes
bit into a world only happy to bite back
The hem
of her tasteful Chanel ensemble
CTAO 210 Interpretative Reading
kissed her mid-thigh because
honey
everything should.
She was just this side of parody.
Brighter and sharper
than nay woman could be.
She was like those women
who weren't but were
dressed in dreams,
shot in shadows
and looking up from under.
And no, she wasn't a woman
but she knew what woman was:
Life's finest detail,
an unfailing rhythm,
a gift to be opened and peeled away lightly.
And she walked Newton Broadway,
land of overpriced bars and bad coffeehouses,
land of urbane trash and Cubs fans
shaking their pin heads in disbelief
as she walked by.
She walked it,
queen for a day,
all day every day,
not to the manner born
but to the manner borrowed.
And when they spat the word "faggot"
like bad aftertaste,
when the word "faggot" sneered from their mouths
of minds to small to hold anything else,
she called on the goddesses
that she prayed to daily
for the patience to outlast it,
for the strength to endure it,
for the style to rise above.
Page 31 of 34 Poetry Packet
Marlene,
hear me,
Josephine,
hear me
Ms. Davis,
hear me
Joan Crawford,
hear me
Marilyn,
hear me
Mahalia,
hear me
Grace Jones,
hear me
Madonna,
hear me
And she raised her square shoulders
and she thrust her rough chin forward,
and she executed a perfect
1950's B-movie pivotal moment turn
and said,
WHAT
WOULD
YOU
KNOW
ABOUT
GLAMOUR
MOTHAFUCKA!
And it gave her great joy
to watch their amazed faces fall,
to hear air sputter in search of retort,
to smell the progression of fear to caution to respect.
girly girl
she who was he as she,
girly girl walked it
Long live the queen.
CTAO 210 Interpretative Reading
Carolina
by: Derrick Brown
Their eyes know no Harlem.
Their hands know no Calypso.
Their hearts know no whispers
but those that the night let go.
You are Myrtle Beach girls.
Cruising the strip,
moving like horny groceries
on a bloodshot checker's conveyor belt.
Chant into girldom
with your Cyndi Laupher anthems
donning all that the malls will allow.
How can we not fall as me
with your wine glass of Coors light la la.
I will Koresh your body.
I will sew your skirt into an evening Dresden.
Your chick packed anti-hoopty
with the ridiculous neon lit undercarriage-chain smoking the fear
of the stiff chinned Raleigh boys on the corner.
Waffle House accents, homophobic jeans,
and Abercrombie haircuts.
They don't have a chance against the camisole heart attack.
They are hungry to ride the backs of motorbikes in mini-skirts
the u-u-umbling engine teasing them into moist deveil's dew
cake.
The hot wind of Anais Nin
racing lines up their now snail-grossed legs.
You will not love him.
You will embrace him out of fear, excited.
You will cry out into the hotel night near the
bathtubs full
of ice,
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"You're a champ! You're a nameless champ."
I found a pair of panties in the streets of Myrtle Beach.
I did not turn them in to lost and found.
These were not the kind of garments that just fall from luggage,
they were manna.
I carried the exceptional panties for two years-I made people think I was somebody.
I told stories back at Ft. Bragg about how "my girl" in Myrtle
rarely writes because of her asthma and tennis elbow.
She made me carry these panties in memoriam
or she'd cut me off from her bulbous spandex tantric lust.
Slurring to the soldiers sharing Crown Royal
We made "chill all love"
Lacking the imagination that comes from experience
when they in what sexual position she liked it
I would say "Normal position"
At night from the drunkenness of my barracks window
with one eyed closed
I'd watch the wonderful white flares grow,
skidding into the night
over the jump boots hanging from stale licorice telephone wires.
I'd slow them incendiaries down.
Play them backwards.
Exit them from my mouth
feel them as a kiss from phantom war harlots.
These white flares-that told us to aver our eyes to retain night vision-I would soon stare ino
begging this light to take me somewhere,
to the kind of black-haired faceless woman
who would toss her underwear
from a moving vehicle
just because the night told her to.
CTAO 210 Interpretative Reading
First Period
by: Kevin M. Derrig
half way through first period
dust accumulated on the sweaty palm of my
raised hand
must be a centimeter thick by now
as the chicken-legged teacher goes around the
room
defacing students homework from last night
with red pen graffiti
that focuses more on missed commas than the
content of the sentences
he finally decides to acknowledge me
"Mr. Derrig, why do I have a feeling that this is
another one of your dumb
comments. You consistently waste my time. Why
don't you just drop out or something?
why don't I just drop out
Why don't I just drop out!
and it was at that moment that all statistics
began to make sense to me
statistics of children who mouths water more
for the many taste of
society corner slanged penicillins
than the cardboard textures of diplomas
with pipes more important to fill
than class requirements
statistics of classes cut
to avoid battlefields full of aggravated shrapnel
from teachers with exploding tempers
teachers with magnifying glasses at the end of
pointers
who fee off the brightness of surrounding
students
to singe holes in the esteems of those who need
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just a little more help
than
others
I wanted to turn my shot-down hand into a fist
I wanted to hit him 'til he was incapable of speaking
anymore
but I didn't want to become another number in
overflowing manila folders
of children arrested in school
and we wonder why a gun seems to fit perfectly
in the hands of this generations adolescents
ladies and gentlemen
I'm writing this poem to highlight that which has
been stuck like gum
underneath wobbly desks
free from parental eyes
only to mess the hand of those who have to sit
there
I'm writing this poem to speak for all the rows of
children before me
who remained voiceless in the cracks of school
and its sound proof text books
I'm writing this poem for all the children who
have not yet been named
the ones that will one day have to fill these rows
I've been struggling in
only to enter classrooms where they'll be shot
down for what they feel
Ladies and gentlemen
the future of America is being crushed between
the molars
of power-hungry tyrant who think class rooms
are boot camps
CTAO 210 Interpretative Reading
and if we have any teachers in the audience
I urge you to understand that the hand you grab
the chalk with
the hand you grab those red pens with
the voices you speak with
are oversized chisels
and you must proceed to teach with caution
for what you say and what you do is written in
stone
and if you chisel too hard these minds can crack
"So what don't you understand now, Mr. Derrig?"
I just wanted to know if I could go to the bathroom.
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