CW Poetry Class: Week 3 Poem 1

I have rather a love/hate relationship with my job. The coworkers are great, but the policies in place and the people that come through leave something to be desired. This abecedarian sonnet helps me deal.

Retail Therapy

Retail is the bane of my existence. I’m done with sales.

Teaching’s my calling, not this monetary jujitsu.

Vampiric patrons enter the store and I clench my jaw.

Xpertly falsified perkiness rings in my welcome to the foray

zombified by the brightly colored displays. I need some java.

Be that as it may, I will perform my civic

duty, and ferry stranger’s money away with a smile.

For this ceremony of materialism is a paying gig.

“Have you heard about our rewards card? May I

justify my reason for offering you a way into debt?” My back

longs for relief from my boss’s pressure. You think I’m

not serious? You try this for four years. Te lo ruego.
Please get me outta here. I’m done with this cirq(ue).

CW Poetry Class: First Poem

So for the first week of class, we read "The Backyard Mermaid" by Matthea Harvey and I wrote this for my first assignment. I loved the concept of the mermaid being desperate to be in a wetter world. It reminded me of my sister’s indoor cat that tries to run outside every time we open a door.

Indoor Outside Cat

There are only small chances to escape.

Her harness, though restricting,

is the key to the patio door,

but her mother will be gone until Thursday.

The door by her food is opened regularly,

but only leads to spiders’ homes, metal devices,

and a roaring machine her keeper uses to go outside.

Why does the keeper use that machine?

Outside is not scary like that machine, but

quiet and wondrous like the equally baffling shower

whose mouth spouts nothing but hot water and

does nothing but make her mother smell different.

She must get out in to the open,

into the sunlight unpolluted by windows.

She can almost feel the wind in her whiskers and taste

the pine needles and cold grass.

Maybe if she sings her feelings her keeper will understand.

The keeper likes to nuzzle her mate at the front door

when he leaves in the morning.

Longing for a sniff of something earthier

than the dust in the litter box, she advances

undeterred, even purring. She will map out

every inch of that grassy space. An indoor cat

at home in her outside place.

CW Poetry Class: Week 2 Assignment

I am taking a creative writing class this semester and so far have worked on two poems. This is the project I have been working on this week. It is an exercise created by Jim Simmerman that has really challenged the way I think about the subject I chose for this poem. Hopefully you'll find it interesting too.

Twenty Little Poetry Projects

1.  Begin the poem with a metaphor.
2.  Say something specific but utterly preposterous.
3.  Use at least one image for each of the five senses.
4.  Use one example of synaesthesia (mixing the senses)
5.  Use the proper name of a person and the proper name of a place.
6.  Contradict something you said earlier in the poem.
7.  Change direction or digress from the last thing you said.
8.  Use a word (slang?) you’ve never seen in a poem.
9.  Use an example of false cause/effect logic.
10. Use a piece of “talk” you’ve actually heard (preferably in dialect         and/or which you don’t understand).
11. Create a metaphor using the following construction; “The (adjective) (concrete noun) of (abstract noun)…”
12. Use an image in such a way as to reverse its usual associative qualities.
13. Make the persona or character in the poem do something he/she could not do in real life.
14. Refer to yourself by nickname and in the third person.
15. Write in the future tense so that part of the poem seems to be a prediction.
16. Modify a noun with an unlikely adjective.
17. Make a declarative assertion that sounds convincing but that finally makes no sense.
18. Use a phrase from a language other than English.
19. Make a non-human object say or do something human (personification).

20. Close the poem with a vivid image that makes no statement, but that “echoes’ an image from earlier in the poem.