FIRST BLOG POST EVER!! (thanks to Tyler's hounding)

Here's a poem- well, two of a cycle- that I workshopped today in poetry class.



(II)

“A heart-like crater”: what, open, feeds
what is not open. Always, a double movement:
the event saying itself; what comes
after. A family sits around a table.
The signs are: fork, placemat,
face. The family talks. A face sits. Someone
else is there, in every case. “Stop acting,”
the face might say, like a boy growing old. Time

“to do the dishes,” or something, it might be time
for something. “Start acting” (like a man)(etc.).
A face sits, a family talks, we get the point:
the signs are: to know: to become:
even the possibility of family, the possibility
of possibility seems remote. The event closes itself, said,
always, a double movement: what can be
opened. What, closed, can be fed.










(III)

“A heart-like crater”: the heaviness of day.
A stone fills the crater. The said
fills the, what is new, say
a face comes into your
life, say there is a rushing of something
else. A family sits around a table.
There is the constant saying of faces.
“A heart-like crater”: there is a time, too,

there is a time that could hold
the saying. Constant,
a family sits around a table. Each one is someone
else. There is a life, say, there is a rushing,
a face comes apart, must be met again.
New. New new new yes but it fills
always, into said, the crater becomes stone,
a heart-like stone. The heaviness of a day.






**


(The leading quote is from a Paul Celan poem)

(The assignment was to incorporate 8 words, one in each line, and then to re-use those 8 words in a second 8-line stanza, in reverse order (so, 12345678; 87654321). It ended up being a really interesting exercise, and forced me to be more tight than usual, to play with a certain economy of signs. I liked the results, so I kept trying them...)