Reasons to believe

1. I posted some photos online from the high school poetry workshop I taught last summer, which continues to burn in my mind. I’m glad that I waited to post the photos until the cascade of other photos from the students were through, until they were well into their semesters at school, and maybe had forgotten some of the smaller moments. When I did this, T. posted a comment, to the effect of  “I’m literally in tears,” how much he missed everybody, and how “professional” he thought the class was compared some other folks he’s working with now. Never expected that. So amazed to know that his memory of how the group dynamic turned out is so rosy. It really did turn out pretty great at the end–the kids got past their differences and learned to work in spite of them. But woooooooo…we had our moments.
2. A day or two later, A. texted me to thank us for teaching the class, and to let me know that he had won a contest at some youth arts conference in Wisconsin with one of the poems that he’d written in our program over the summer.
3. Then T. sent me a message: I still think about u. U r the sun exploding in my soul. I ment to thank u b cuz I’m realizing how much of not only a better poet but person u molded me to b. Keep ur head up and wash your hair. (He’s referencing a line from “All She Wrote” by Harryette Mullen–”Wash your wet hair?”, a poem we read over the summer).
4. E. and I (as well as A. and I) have been braiding poetry back and forth, at their request, since the workshop ended. E. just asked if I would record some of the poems with him for his new album. I also found out that he started poetry braids with A., and another classmate of his.
5. I saw E. perform the other night, and he said, “Thanks for keeping me writing!” I–kind of flabbergasted–said, “No, thanks for keeping me writing!” He said that he misses poetry and hasn’t been getting enough.

It just never occurred to me what a lasting effect this workshop would have on the kids, kind of a ripple effect of new collaborations, new work, and relationships that are ongoing. I’m thankful that I get a little snapshot from them every once in a while of what’s going on (who’s been accepted to what college, who’s working on a student newspaper, who’s performing…). It isn’t often that, as a teacher, I get to see what my kids are like in the time after I’ve worked with them, and to even imagine whether the work has had any impact on them or not. I don’t flatter myself that I’ve played a vital part–the students I worked with last summer are really talented, full of initiative, and by and large extremely hard-working–they’ll find opportunities regardless. But just hearing from them and getting the thanks, knowing that they’re doing well, encourages me in the middle of what has been a long and challenging fall…the kids I have right now are fabulous, but there are so many of them. The poems are amazing, but I only have 40 minutes a pop, and I see about 180+ kids at each of the two schools where I’m a poet-in-residence. Also I have a lot of after-school work at the moment, which has its plusses, but, quite frankly, much of the time can be an uphill battle in terms of working with the schools and getting kids in the door. In-school work is still probably one of my favorite places to be, because I know I have an impact, I have a captive audience, and I can reach a lot of kids.

I’m just glad to know it matters.

anyone tired of hearing about my life yet?

Too bad!

From an e-mail to my friend Ryan in which he asked me, simply, “How’s life in Chicago?” That’s what you get for asking…

###

“Good…okay. I applied for a job at this place called Urban Gateways (www.urbangateways.org), and much to my surprise, actually got an interview. I knew my application fucking ROCKED but I just didn’t think I was cool enough. They haven’t called me back yet, though. I sorta felt like I bombed, even though my whole BODY was like screaming out, ‘CAN’T YOU SEE HOW PERFECT I AM FOR THIS?! WE ARE SOUL MATES!!’ But as Kelsey said, ‘This job is so not ready for a Rachel.’ God bless her. I am looking for other things. Every time I see a plane flying overhead I involuntarily rise onto my tiptoes. I write sometimes, but I often go out salsa dancing when I should be writing…or sleeping. I don’t sleep enough. I feel guilty way too often, especially for a Protestant. I feel like something really great is about to happen…or something really scary, that will later become something really great. I’ve gone to a couple really really cool poetry event things lately. I think I’m gonna do more of that. I meet strangers and instantly captivate them with the way I laugh at all their jokes and my confessional style. Last Thursday, one of those strangers drew a box around me and said, ‘This is a no-bullshit zone.’ I meet strangers wherever I go.”

prayer

Okay, so the internet is a wild and wondrous place. I wrote this a couple days ago, and somehow accidentally navigated away from the page, and, with a little high-pitched animal sound, realized I had lost it. Looked around, tried to get it back, to no avail. Gone. Gone gone.

So, today, one minute ago, actually, I go to update my journal, and what should appear but the journal I wrote a couple days ago…but not in the form I left it. It was a feedback loop of my journal ten times or so, messed up as hell, as well as a first draft of the same journal (much longer and more clichéd and self-aggrandizing) long since deleted. Weird, dudes. So here it is.

###

I’m having a hard time even asking for what I need. I’m not even sure what I’m asking for, really. It takes so much time to wade through the guilts, like different-colored wires, to wind them up secure them with velcro tapes and sort them in their proper boxes. I’m having a hard time even asking.

I guess the main thing is that I feel trapped, which is the worst lie, and that I feel like I can never go anywhere else, and I’m starting to even feel that if I stay that my welcome and my ruse will quickly wear out.

I don’t know where to begin. I’m so tired of feeling bad for not being happy where I’m at. It’s a damn sinking ship, and I’m tired of hanging on.

I know what you’re doing. I just don’t know what it looks like, and I’m so scared, I can’t even tell you, and there’s one of those guilts again.

Okay, I’m going to try and ask, and I’m going to try and not feel bad while I do it, and I’m going to try and do it without crying:
will you help me? Will you help me build a life where I can write a little and do some community work a little and not feel so trapped? Will you bring me people to help me? Will you help me to be braver? Will you show me the path? Will you give me the strength to work, to write my best and work my best regardless, and to take my paths when I see them?

I think feel a little better now. Thanks.

###

Poem, ya’ll. Brand new. Comments and suggestions invited, including title suggesions…

I just wanted to talk.
At first, anyway.
So that’s what it feels like.
That’s what I thought,
that’s what went through my head
when my fist connected with her pretty cheek,
So that’s what it feels like
to hit a woman.
as the hot blood flooded into my skull.
See, we were stopped on Orleans,
me and my boy, and this fucking
moreno, he hit my boy’s car a little
and we stopped him, we got out,
just to talk it out, man to man, like.
But this guy, he wouldn’t get out
of his fucking car, right?
And he’s on his phone,
and I tell him to get out,
Roll down your fucking window,
I tell him,
Roll down this fucking window right now
or I’m gonna bust it out.
And he doesn’t, and so I, like,
spit on the dude’s window–
that’s what my boy tells me, anyway;
I don’t really remember that much,
I guess I was probly afraid
to break my hand, ’cause that’s what happened
the last time I punched something.
Then I catch sight of this girl crossing Orleans all alone,
and I start walking over, you know,
just to talk, like,
Hey, girl, what’s going on,
But she had to be all fucking bitchy, like,
Look, I’m not even tryin’ to talk to you,
sweetie.
It was the sweetie that really got me.
I just wanted to talk to her.
And she turns away and walks faster, and this fucking pink stripe
she got in her hair blows back and up,
like a, like a, pink piece of flame or something.
And I start to walk away, but I think about
the dude who won’t get out
of the fucking car, and my boy waiting,
and my spit dripping down the window,
and I hear her heels going clik-clik-clik
and her cute little ankles crossing back and forth,
and I just turn back around
and don’t even know what I’m going to do
until I do it, and I get that rush,
that rush that you get when you’re doing something bad,
something bad that you really really want to do,
but then all of a sudden you get terrified–
like when me and my sister were real real little,
and I’d lose my head and pop her,
and in about a split second the satisfaction wore off, and the fear of God
came into me, otherwise known as Mama,
knowing what was coming.
Well this time,
the same thing happened,
except after the fear of God,
there was no punishment.
Nothing happened.
I ran up on her,
I punched her on the side of her face,
ran back to the car,
but no one came to help her,
no boot up my ass to teach me a lesson.
She yelled, hard,
What the fuck is your problem, you fucking cocksucker?!
And, I don’t know–
this is gonna sound weird,
but if I didn’t know better,
I’d say that she wanted me to come back.
Come back and fight, or explain myself.

I don’t know, though.
I can’t say for sure.

winter poem

I might chicken out and take this down eventually, because I’m sure that I’m not really supposed to do this kind of thing, but one of my girls wrote this poem in the last session before break. We read The Polar Express, cut out snowflakes, and I asked them to write a haiku about some winter memory. One of my most mind-blowingly talented poets wrote this. Not a haiku, but look.

Snowflakes in my mind
Coldness in my heart
Sadness in my eyes
Not like this, not tonight
these winter nights
arrived

here’s that poem I told you about.

I haven’t written a poem in a while. This is a first draft, so I invite your comments.

***

Sex is a glass of water
the first glass of water set out in the morning for me to drink
in the thirsty morning and I'm woken up late and rushing past
and the glass drips
and halfway out the door I have time for only one gulp
and Holy God
it is the best water ever
but it is not enough

Arriving home
late
the glass is still there
warmed by the room
dusted and staled
I might drink it down
dust and all    faintly metallic

or I might let it sit    and evaporate
and I evaporate a little too
shrinking under my skin like a raisin
because somehow
it's hard to drink a glass of water
when you finally have time to drink it

Me and Jesus

Me and Jesus were sitting on my back porch the other night
until real late.
Ben had already gone to bed.
I told him that I would be in soon, but I wasn’t.

“Sometimes,” I told him,
“I just want to be free of this world.”
“I do. I do know.”
I put my forehead down on his knee.
He put his hand on the back of my neck
and held it there, firmly.
I cried a little bit
but I’d already cried so much that night
that my eyes just burned.

“I just get so tired sometimes,”
“Oh, baby,” I looked up, and was surprised,
his eyes were full and fixed on mine. “Oh, honey. I know you do.”

“I’m not suicidal,” I said.
He laughed silently.
“Peace.
Be still.”

“Do you really have to leave tomorrow?”
“‘Love makes no sense of space and time,’ remember.”
“Fuck. I love that song so fucking much…what’s the rest of that line…’Space and time will disappear’…I can’t wait until that happens.”

“I would go with you, you know.
I would leave with you now if you asked me to,” I told him.
“I know you would. We made that bargain long ago, remember?”
“What song is that from?”
“Les fucking Miserables, dude. Jean Veljean says it
before he turns himself in.
My point is that it’s already being done,
it’s already done, in a sense.
Rachel, I wish you could see it,
the way your thread weaves in and out of this life.
It’s so fucking majestic.
I can’t wait to show you.”

I shrugged and slumped against the railing,
looking out at the moon.
My eyes hooded,
a muscle in one beat with fatigue, like a heart.

He suddenly took my face in his hands, soft, but said with fierceness,
“Silly. Don’t you know how I need you here?
Don’t you know just a little
how indispensable you are?”

I found a new well of tears and tumbled into it.

I began to speak in a small voice that didn’t seem to come from my body,
“They don’t know…no…I don’t know…I’m not sure…”

“I know. I know.” he said, almost angry.
He let go of my face.
“And besides, you’re wrong.”
He looked at me and shook his head.
He wiped my face with his scarf.
I shuddered a little, although I didn’t really feel cold
and he pulled in me close with one thick arm, my ear into his chest.
hearing his hot blood, warming me. He smelled
like fall leaves and wood smoke.
I felt a little drunk again.

“It’s not going to happen, you know.”
My eyes shot up. “What do you mean?”
“I mean,
you’re not going to fuck this up.
He’s not ever going to leave you.”
I sobbed out loud.
“And you’re not going to leave him either. You’re not going to drive him away
or any bullshit like that, so you need to just put that out of your mind.”

“Jesus?
“Yeah.”
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered.
“Sh. None of that.”
“But-”
“We’ve been over this.
Peace,” he said.
“Peace.
Be still.”

“Jesus?”
“Hm.”
“I kind of want everyone to be in love with me.
That’s kind of nuts, isn’t it.”
He started nodding his head before I finished. “No dude.
I totally know what you mean.”

some more retreat

Have you ever read “Adam and Eve” by Tony Hoagland? Some of you have. It’s from his book “Donkey Gospel.” He might be the most honest poet I’ve ever read. This particular poem talks about an episode with a woman. I’d tell you the main line, but you should open the book and look at it yourself, get the impact. Suffice it to say, he confronts his own ugliness, male ugliness, the bliss of power over weakness.

It’s hard shit. He “interrogates” this confession, as Di put it. She had us write five things we’ve thought or wanted to say over the last year that are totally inappropriate, that might have no place in the real world. She said that sometimes there are things that are true, or that were true for a moment, that you can never say to a person, because “they’d tear too big a hole.” However, they’re true, and as Hoagland said in this poem, “Until we can say the truth, there can be no tenderness.” I think that’s what he said.

My first five were about work. We’ve had a lot of people quit in the last year, and a lot of stress in general. The first three are about co-workers who quit. KT is my boss.

I was glad that EO left.
I was glad that EG left.
I was glad that CS left.
I am so sick of KT’s worried face.
I wanted to disappear and abandon everyone.

I didn’t like ‘em, so I wrote these:

I loved it when the Cuban man told me,
When I dance with you,
I suffer! He’s about my mom’s age.

I dance because you don’t have to talk
to anyone when you’re dancing. You don’t
even have to have a name.

Every time I got out of the car during
an argument, every time I cried
with frustration, I did it to hurt him.

I want him to fix my life.

When I’m dancing, I miss him,
and I enjoy missing him.

Now that I look at it, I’m not sure of the truth of this, now that I realize I’m putting my supposedly completely inappropriate feelings on the internet. Maybe I get some kinda thrill out of it. I think my greatest fears are either that I’m completely nuts or completely normal, but that sounds like something I’d say in high school. It’s not even really a poem. She told us we could choose our favorite one and “interrogate it” in a poem, like Hoagland did. I’d like to do that, I think. I wonder if I have the guts.

A couple years ago, Lucille Clifton read one of my poems and said, “You need to be a little bit braver.” She’d prefaced this comment by saying, “You know I love you, right?” “Ye-s,” I lied.

Retreat

I just got back from a staff retreat in Lawrence, Michigan. We have a board member who has a home there, and it’s marvelous, not because it’s a mansion, but because it has love in it. Di Suess came up and did a poetry workshop for us, then coached us on our poetry prompts and methods.

As a starter, to “blow the crap out of the carburetor,” as she put it, she had us choose five nouns that sounded good to us just then, and three each of juicy/intense adjectives and verbs. Here are mine:

silk
apple
seed
cornflower
callus

bloated
slippery
clogged

tongue
wipe
open

(I noticed that I chose a lot of words that were interchangeable as nouns/verbs/adjectives)

Then she handed out “I the Woman” by Sandra Cisneros. Do you want me to post it? Oh, what the hell, here it is:

I the Woman

I
am she
of your stories
the notorious
one
leg wrapped
around
the door
bare heart
sticking
like a burr
the fault
the back street
the weakness
that’s me

I’m
the Thursday
night
the poor
excuse
I am she
I’m dark
in the veins
I’m
intoxicant
I’m hip
and good skin
brass
and sharp tooth
hard lip pushed
against
the air
I’m lightbeam
no stopping me

I am
your temporary
thing
your own
mad
dancing
I am
a live
wildness
left
behind
one earring
in the car
a finger-
print
on skin
the black smoke
in your
clothes
and in
your
mouth

from “My Wicked Wicked Ways” by Sandra Cisneros

Then she gave us five or ten minutes to write our own. Here’s mine.

I
am silk
the best part
of the apple
the rest tossed
away
the seed
sprouting
in your
gutter
my body is
a cornflower
I spring up
overnight
I am the red spot
after you shave
away the callus
my belly
is full
bloated with food
I slide over all
your slippery
floors
I clogged
the
toilet
and tongued
the dark spaces
the crack
of your door
I wipe your body down
and open you
again

She had us notice how slim and sinuous Cisneros’s poem is. Now that I look at it, I notice that mine’s not quite so. Mine has tits, you might say.

I wrote this shortly after we were married

The Cost

It’s so easy now.
Like a baby:
whenever he’s out of my sightlines
I imagine him gone

or going. I conjure a hospital
bed, I conjure years, smells and wasting,
long sickness, his life clinging
and letting go,

drunk drivers, battalions
of drunk drivers,
his body tumbling like a dummy
at sickening angles
on the freeway shoulder
where his car had broken down,

or crushed against the overpass
like a sandwich in foil,
or burned
down to the crowns on his teeth
and the pins in his knee.

Some stray bullet.
Some old story, his face pasted.
Some scrap of video.

From the window where I sit,
I roll my already grieving body
through the sweetness
drunk on the almost-certainty
that I will see him soon.
I will probably see him soon.

I see myself getting up from the couch
on repeat,
rewound and replayed,
picking up the various calls:
“Mrs. Javellana?…
It’s about your husband.”