In 2003 I protested the war
I made a rainbow peace sign in oil pastel
It said "love your enemy."
Some cars honked, some drivers gave peace signs, others fingers at the base
The middle fingers meant they were against us, the honks and peace signs meant they agreed.
A smart-ass asked, "Love your enemy even if he's a Republican?"
Most of my relatives on my mother's side are Republican.
My father was against the war.
With him I was sure I agreed.
My opinions, juxtaposed with his, were pastel.
I enjoyed the festive, anarchic atmosphere on Gibson street outside the base.
George W. Bush was a convenient enemy.
What does it mean to love your enemy?
New Mexico governor Susanna Martinez wasn't always a Republican.
Police storm troopers with helmets and horses guarded the base.
My family had its own war.
The other side of my sign had a rainbow peace sign in oil pastel.
My gay and lesbian associates agreed.
I only wanted to talk to people who agreed.
Anyone who disagreed was my enemy.
I was an artist with my cardboard sign in pastel.
It wasn't cool to be a Republican.
In my mind, there has always been a war.
There are weapons of mass destruction at the base.
My brother's now stationed at Fort Bliss, his base.
First he asked for Hawaii; the army agreed.
So I got to swim with sea turtles because of the war.
My brother was not my enemy.
I hope he's not a Republican.
I now sketch nudes in pastel.
Art has saved my life through pastel.
They still protest against the weapons at the base.
The new President is not a Republican.
His are policies with which I have said I agreed.
An Alaskan mother with librarian glasses is the new enemy.
Inside me, there is still a war.
Should I have agreed with my enemy?
When the media painted the war in pastel,
What's the basis for not being Republican?
Saturday, March 24, 2012
Inspired by Stephen Hawking
Note: Stephen Hawking has ALS. This is NOT his story. I should change the name...
In which Stephen Hawking as a young boy pays his respects to the Christian deities he will later renounce in order to succeed in his chosen profession. As a physicist by trade, his job will be to question, not to know, to seek answers, not to have faith. For this, his vocation, he will choose mind over body. It is a choice he made at age 9. When Stephen Hawking was nine years old, his parents, unsure of his future,toured an institution for the physically and mentally handicapped outside London. “Keep to the right!” an orderly barks. His obsessive mother ensures that Stephen's wheels line up exactly with the linoleum pattern on the floor. The facility's authorities assure his parents that they will be able to visit often, that he will have three meals a day, amusements, education, and companionship—in short, that he will be well cared-for and happy. He will have exercise as his condition permits and ample time in the open air of the wholesome English countryside.
His first shock is that the other inmates cannot speak. His fellow cripples and invalids moan in their wheelchairs, and their attempts at human speech are unintelligible. Some of their eyes show intelligence in their eyes, others madness, and others a bland, peaceful simplicity that fills the schoolboy with abject horror. Even worse, it seems the orderlies cannot tell the difference. The orderlies don't look into their eyes. They talk to all of them as if they were children. They say, “Do you like this music?” in the type of false-cheerful tone one uses with children. Treat them all as if they were retarded, in other words. “Do you like the view, Simon?” one of them asks as he wheels a gurgling teenager to a window. Some of them are hooked up to breathing machines. None of them look happy, but then, Stephen has never been happy. Stephen has a theory that his parents need him to be ill. He wonders, in that case, why they are foisting him off on this facility.
In panic, Stephen searches for an answer to his predicament. He recalls a sermon: Jesus healing the blind and the lame. “Your sins are forgiven,” Stephen hears the Anglican parish minister intone, while Stephen's eyes wander up to the vaulted ceiling above his wheelchair in the aisle with its vivid paintings of angels and demons. “Then Jesus said, rise up,take your mat. Your faith has healed you.” Then another thought enters Stephen's mind: an evil thought, and the smell of sulfur fills his nostrils, making him wish for fine motor control in his hands to reach up and wipe his nose. But even if he weren't confined to a wheelchair, he would consider himself too mature for such a childish gesture. Besides, his analytical mind has already deduced that the smell is not real, but symbolic, accompanying his thoughts of Another who may yet help him. He remembers sitting in another large room with vaulted ceilings, full of hushed spectators... a staging of Goethe's Faust. A high school auditorium.
FAUST: If ever your flatteries can coax me / To be pleased with myself, if ever cast
A spell of pleasure that can hoax me-- / Then let that day be my last! / That's my wager!
MEPHISTOPHELES: Done!
FAUST: Let's shake!
If ever I say to the passing moment / 'Linger a while! Thou art so fair!
Then you may cast me into fetters, / And I will gladly perish then and there!
It was a school play. His older brother had a minor part, and Stephen, because of his wheelchair, had a front-row seat. I can be Dr. Faustus, he thinks. He knows Faust is a Doctor of Philosophy, not a Doctor of Medicine. Stephen has visited many doctors of Medicine. Physical and Occupational Therapists, as well. In vain, they tried to teach him to eat with a spoon, before Mother despaired and hired attendants to feed him instead. “But, please,” he prays to whoever may be listening, though he knows he must lose his foolish superstition if Physical Science he will pursue. “Don't let me be one of these.” He has seen the exhibits of stuffed finches with different beaks, illustrating the theories of Mr. Charles Darwin, and heard the rector, the same one promising he may some day take up his mat and walk, when he cannot even hold a pencil, his dearest desire, though he willed the muscles, joints, and tendons of his fingers to be strong, even to move, condemning the falsehood of Mr. Darwin's ideas and any who would give them credence. Therefore, if he is to make anything of himself, the God and Jesus of the Rector and of Mother will not be of help. Can the Sin of Unbelief be forgiven, seventy times seven, as the Rector says Jesus says we must forgive our neighbor if he sins against us, when it is necessary for his credibility with the scientists? His dream of lecturing a crowd of students through a box that gives him a voice?
Alternately, Stephen could become a preacher, preaching from that mechanical voice box.
Mephistopheles is not your name, but I know what you're up to just the same...
As long as Dr. Faustus's intellectual curiosity was not satisfied, he would not die, and the Devil could not take his soul. Stephen feels a vigor and strength course through his palsied limbs. Yes. I have much curiosity. Mother says, “Curiosity killed the cat,” but I need to know. I may never leave this accursed chair, but I can befriend the stars, commune with the Heavens. The Universe will be my domain. Scientific historians will write that I was too young to see this future for myself. The rector will deny this corrupt bargain, for I have not yet reached the Age of Majority, the Age of Reason...
In which Stephen Hawking as a young boy pays his respects to the Christian deities he will later renounce in order to succeed in his chosen profession. As a physicist by trade, his job will be to question, not to know, to seek answers, not to have faith. For this, his vocation, he will choose mind over body. It is a choice he made at age 9. When Stephen Hawking was nine years old, his parents, unsure of his future,toured an institution for the physically and mentally handicapped outside London. “Keep to the right!” an orderly barks. His obsessive mother ensures that Stephen's wheels line up exactly with the linoleum pattern on the floor. The facility's authorities assure his parents that they will be able to visit often, that he will have three meals a day, amusements, education, and companionship—in short, that he will be well cared-for and happy. He will have exercise as his condition permits and ample time in the open air of the wholesome English countryside.
His first shock is that the other inmates cannot speak. His fellow cripples and invalids moan in their wheelchairs, and their attempts at human speech are unintelligible. Some of their eyes show intelligence in their eyes, others madness, and others a bland, peaceful simplicity that fills the schoolboy with abject horror. Even worse, it seems the orderlies cannot tell the difference. The orderlies don't look into their eyes. They talk to all of them as if they were children. They say, “Do you like this music?” in the type of false-cheerful tone one uses with children. Treat them all as if they were retarded, in other words. “Do you like the view, Simon?” one of them asks as he wheels a gurgling teenager to a window. Some of them are hooked up to breathing machines. None of them look happy, but then, Stephen has never been happy. Stephen has a theory that his parents need him to be ill. He wonders, in that case, why they are foisting him off on this facility.
In panic, Stephen searches for an answer to his predicament. He recalls a sermon: Jesus healing the blind and the lame. “Your sins are forgiven,” Stephen hears the Anglican parish minister intone, while Stephen's eyes wander up to the vaulted ceiling above his wheelchair in the aisle with its vivid paintings of angels and demons. “Then Jesus said, rise up,take your mat. Your faith has healed you.” Then another thought enters Stephen's mind: an evil thought, and the smell of sulfur fills his nostrils, making him wish for fine motor control in his hands to reach up and wipe his nose. But even if he weren't confined to a wheelchair, he would consider himself too mature for such a childish gesture. Besides, his analytical mind has already deduced that the smell is not real, but symbolic, accompanying his thoughts of Another who may yet help him. He remembers sitting in another large room with vaulted ceilings, full of hushed spectators... a staging of Goethe's Faust. A high school auditorium.
FAUST: If ever your flatteries can coax me / To be pleased with myself, if ever cast
A spell of pleasure that can hoax me-- / Then let that day be my last! / That's my wager!
MEPHISTOPHELES: Done!
FAUST: Let's shake!
If ever I say to the passing moment / 'Linger a while! Thou art so fair!
Then you may cast me into fetters, / And I will gladly perish then and there!
It was a school play. His older brother had a minor part, and Stephen, because of his wheelchair, had a front-row seat. I can be Dr. Faustus, he thinks. He knows Faust is a Doctor of Philosophy, not a Doctor of Medicine. Stephen has visited many doctors of Medicine. Physical and Occupational Therapists, as well. In vain, they tried to teach him to eat with a spoon, before Mother despaired and hired attendants to feed him instead. “But, please,” he prays to whoever may be listening, though he knows he must lose his foolish superstition if Physical Science he will pursue. “Don't let me be one of these.” He has seen the exhibits of stuffed finches with different beaks, illustrating the theories of Mr. Charles Darwin, and heard the rector, the same one promising he may some day take up his mat and walk, when he cannot even hold a pencil, his dearest desire, though he willed the muscles, joints, and tendons of his fingers to be strong, even to move, condemning the falsehood of Mr. Darwin's ideas and any who would give them credence. Therefore, if he is to make anything of himself, the God and Jesus of the Rector and of Mother will not be of help. Can the Sin of Unbelief be forgiven, seventy times seven, as the Rector says Jesus says we must forgive our neighbor if he sins against us, when it is necessary for his credibility with the scientists? His dream of lecturing a crowd of students through a box that gives him a voice?
Alternately, Stephen could become a preacher, preaching from that mechanical voice box.
Mephistopheles is not your name, but I know what you're up to just the same...
As long as Dr. Faustus's intellectual curiosity was not satisfied, he would not die, and the Devil could not take his soul. Stephen feels a vigor and strength course through his palsied limbs. Yes. I have much curiosity. Mother says, “Curiosity killed the cat,” but I need to know. I may never leave this accursed chair, but I can befriend the stars, commune with the Heavens. The Universe will be my domain. Scientific historians will write that I was too young to see this future for myself. The rector will deny this corrupt bargain, for I have not yet reached the Age of Majority, the Age of Reason...
Ashes of Ex-Lovers
Your red-brown skin
and red skin
wiry black hair
pale with the blood vessels making it rosy
Your hazel eyes that change color.
"Has anyone told you you have beautiful eyes,"
says Travis Bickle to his Lady.
It doesn't work out.
We are God's Lonely People.
Flaming red hair
and blue-green eyes
aviator glasses and
thick black glasses
You play the bass
You draw pictures
You write your life story.
You love your rabbit.
You love your son.
You don't believe in owning people.
You made me do things
You didn't
You let me make my own decision
And strive to respect boundaries with women.
You are a feather Indian
You are a dot Indian
You're a white heterosexual male and think people hate you because of that fact.
You don't care about the stock market because you are poor.
You are a Brahmin.
You are a vegetarian
You eat fry bread
but not in my presence
in my presence you eat fruit out of my hand
because we are in a garden of Eden metaphor outside of real life
I gave some M&Ms to a homeless guy on campus
as an undergrad because God said so.
and red skin
wiry black hair
pale with the blood vessels making it rosy
Your hazel eyes that change color.
"Has anyone told you you have beautiful eyes,"
says Travis Bickle to his Lady.
It doesn't work out.
We are God's Lonely People.
Flaming red hair
and blue-green eyes
aviator glasses and
thick black glasses
You play the bass
You draw pictures
You write your life story.
You love your rabbit.
You love your son.
You don't believe in owning people.
You made me do things
You didn't
You let me make my own decision
And strive to respect boundaries with women.
You are a feather Indian
You are a dot Indian
You're a white heterosexual male and think people hate you because of that fact.
You don't care about the stock market because you are poor.
You are a Brahmin.
You are a vegetarian
You eat fry bread
but not in my presence
in my presence you eat fruit out of my hand
because we are in a garden of Eden metaphor outside of real life
I gave some M&Ms to a homeless guy on campus
as an undergrad because God said so.
Self Pity is Fun
Part Truth, Part Fiction
Now I play board games with Gina, who has schizophrenia, and the other mentally ill people who live in the intentional community where I live. It's not so bad here. I have a one-bedroom apartment. I can be grateful I'm only on-and-off dating a cranky middle-aged guy with a DWI and a kid he gets to see once a week, instead of being married to one and pregnant with his kids and watching soap operas on TV. I should be grateful for my intelligence, and my independence, and forget my loneliness.
I met the cranky middle-aged guy on facebook. When I brought him over to join the Community for Mental Illness, he expressed some interest. He brought a cake. I met him outside a Starbucks. I told him later I thought of Hagrid. He said, “When you think of me?” When we went to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II, I said he was Lupin, and I said that we could be Lupin and Tonks for Halloween. The guy had a thing for werewolves. He didn't like being compared to Lupin. He thought he was ugly. He didn't like redheads. I have no idea why he didn't like redheads. I am clueless, it seems. He covered my eyes when it got to the part where we were watching Alan Rickman as Severus Snape. He'd gently kiss my hair and nuzzle my neck at the right parts, though, and that's what I needed, that's all I could handle I felt, as damaged as I was, as broken and damaged and needing the Lord's forgiveness. And my mother was dead. He liked to bite. Tonks was younger, had punk rock hair. At first Lupin rejects her because he thinks he is too old and too scary for her.
The day that I picked him up in the car, he was just a friend of a friend I'd added on Facebook. When I got angry, the feelings of which are expressed in the following paragraph, angry enough to upset the gameboard, he told me, “It's just a game.”
The following is adapted from a blog post I wrote called “Self-Pity is Fun.”
It is about how I managed to ruin a perfectly good game of Settlers of Catan. It is about how I stayed miserable despite winning on my first time playing. It is about how I chose to over-analyze the politics of the game. Most of those progressive politics I learned from my time volunteering at a gift shop in Nob Hill Albuquerque called Peacecraft. I collected the wood, the iron, the other resources. I set up roads and houses. In my mind, it was boiling, it was steaming, and I couldn't stand the placid calmness of the group of us sitting around the table. Gina was especially calm. She has learned to be that way. She hears voices. Thing like board games help her stay distracted from her voices.
By going off on a rant. I'm the only politically correct person in the world. I came from such backward Republican people who had no idea what they were talking about. Every time I mentioned something about the environment or civil rights it got shot down.
This stupid game Settlers of Catan is fucking capitalist. It's all about buying. Buy wood. Buy wheat. Buy sheep. Buy coal. Buy bricks. Build settlements. Hey peeps! Ever hear about the Israeli settlements that are driving the Palestinians off their land? What? We should just play the game?
And I'm winning. I'm a good little Capitalist. It's easy to win when I play by the rules. Cuz boy ain't I smart!
The guy asks to be excused. I want to escape the maddening game, so I follow him out into the backyard of the apartment. There is a full-grown tree. The wooden fence is perfectly cut around the shape of the tree trunk. The side walls that separate this backyard from the ones around it are made of corrugated tin.
“I came out here to smoke,” the guy explains apologetically. He withdraws a cigarette from the inside pocket of his black trench coat.
“I don't mind as long as you stand downwind,” I say. I am used to hanging out at coffee shops like R.B. Winnings or Satellite with smokers. Smokers remind me of summer camp.
He asks me if Gina works at a hospital. A mental hospital, he means. She is so together, in his opinion, with her serious eyes which he can see through her tortoise-shell glasses, that he cannot believe she will be visiting the facility tomorrow for ECT.
“One almost hesitates to inquire what ECT is,” he says.
“ECT is Electro-Convulsive Therapy. Shock Treatment straight out of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,” I explain.
“Oo! Poor baby!” he says.
I consider it a bit patronizing that he would call a grown woman a baby, but in the circumstances we find ourselves in, I can appreciate his sympathy.
“She thinks it helps, though,” I say. “Sucks to be her.”
“Wow. That is pretty intense and is a shame,” he says. “I feel for her. Makes me wonder what warranted the treatment.”
“You can go back in there and ask,” I say. “She's very open.”
Dating can be like a game of Settlers of Catan. You can feel like you lose even when you are winning.
Now I play board games with Gina, who has schizophrenia, and the other mentally ill people who live in the intentional community where I live. It's not so bad here. I have a one-bedroom apartment. I can be grateful I'm only on-and-off dating a cranky middle-aged guy with a DWI and a kid he gets to see once a week, instead of being married to one and pregnant with his kids and watching soap operas on TV. I should be grateful for my intelligence, and my independence, and forget my loneliness.
I met the cranky middle-aged guy on facebook. When I brought him over to join the Community for Mental Illness, he expressed some interest. He brought a cake. I met him outside a Starbucks. I told him later I thought of Hagrid. He said, “When you think of me?” When we went to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II, I said he was Lupin, and I said that we could be Lupin and Tonks for Halloween. The guy had a thing for werewolves. He didn't like being compared to Lupin. He thought he was ugly. He didn't like redheads. I have no idea why he didn't like redheads. I am clueless, it seems. He covered my eyes when it got to the part where we were watching Alan Rickman as Severus Snape. He'd gently kiss my hair and nuzzle my neck at the right parts, though, and that's what I needed, that's all I could handle I felt, as damaged as I was, as broken and damaged and needing the Lord's forgiveness. And my mother was dead. He liked to bite. Tonks was younger, had punk rock hair. At first Lupin rejects her because he thinks he is too old and too scary for her.
The day that I picked him up in the car, he was just a friend of a friend I'd added on Facebook. When I got angry, the feelings of which are expressed in the following paragraph, angry enough to upset the gameboard, he told me, “It's just a game.”
The following is adapted from a blog post I wrote called “Self-Pity is Fun.”
It is about how I managed to ruin a perfectly good game of Settlers of Catan. It is about how I stayed miserable despite winning on my first time playing. It is about how I chose to over-analyze the politics of the game. Most of those progressive politics I learned from my time volunteering at a gift shop in Nob Hill Albuquerque called Peacecraft. I collected the wood, the iron, the other resources. I set up roads and houses. In my mind, it was boiling, it was steaming, and I couldn't stand the placid calmness of the group of us sitting around the table. Gina was especially calm. She has learned to be that way. She hears voices. Thing like board games help her stay distracted from her voices.
By going off on a rant. I'm the only politically correct person in the world. I came from such backward Republican people who had no idea what they were talking about. Every time I mentioned something about the environment or civil rights it got shot down.
This stupid game Settlers of Catan is fucking capitalist. It's all about buying. Buy wood. Buy wheat. Buy sheep. Buy coal. Buy bricks. Build settlements. Hey peeps! Ever hear about the Israeli settlements that are driving the Palestinians off their land? What? We should just play the game?
And I'm winning. I'm a good little Capitalist. It's easy to win when I play by the rules. Cuz boy ain't I smart!
The guy asks to be excused. I want to escape the maddening game, so I follow him out into the backyard of the apartment. There is a full-grown tree. The wooden fence is perfectly cut around the shape of the tree trunk. The side walls that separate this backyard from the ones around it are made of corrugated tin.
“I came out here to smoke,” the guy explains apologetically. He withdraws a cigarette from the inside pocket of his black trench coat.
“I don't mind as long as you stand downwind,” I say. I am used to hanging out at coffee shops like R.B. Winnings or Satellite with smokers. Smokers remind me of summer camp.
He asks me if Gina works at a hospital. A mental hospital, he means. She is so together, in his opinion, with her serious eyes which he can see through her tortoise-shell glasses, that he cannot believe she will be visiting the facility tomorrow for ECT.
“One almost hesitates to inquire what ECT is,” he says.
“ECT is Electro-Convulsive Therapy. Shock Treatment straight out of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest,” I explain.
“Oo! Poor baby!” he says.
I consider it a bit patronizing that he would call a grown woman a baby, but in the circumstances we find ourselves in, I can appreciate his sympathy.
“She thinks it helps, though,” I say. “Sucks to be her.”
“Wow. That is pretty intense and is a shame,” he says. “I feel for her. Makes me wonder what warranted the treatment.”
“You can go back in there and ask,” I say. “She's very open.”
Dating can be like a game of Settlers of Catan. You can feel like you lose even when you are winning.
My Homophobic Ex-Boyfriend
My homophobic ex-boyfriend has dated women even younger than me.
My homophobic ex-boyfriend is a lesbian in a man's body.
My lesbian friend laughs when I tell her about this and says
"I like my lesbians to have actual lesbian bodies."
My homophobic ex-boyfriend feels discriminated against because he is a straight white male.
My homophobic ex-boyfriend has never hit a woman.
My homoophobic ex-boyfriend thinks for himself.
My homophobic ex-boyfriend was attracted to who I am.
My homophobic ex-boyfriend gave me permission to write shit about him on this blog, as long as I stay away from his son
And don't bother him at work
My homophobic ex-boyfriend likes King Kong and Godzilla
My homophobic ex-boyfriend likes Mothra
My homophobic ex-boyfriend likes Bjork and U2
My homophobic ex-boyfriend couldn't stand all my angst
It kept him up at night.
My homophobic is an artist and a writer.
My homophobic ex-boyfriend smokes pot and hates his mother.
My homophobic ex-boyfriend says that Norman Bates says that a man's best friend is his mother.
My homophobic ex-boyfriend is not a Republican.
My homophobic ex-boyfriend is a Pagan.
My homophobic ex-boyfriend once said, "Why do you have to be so cool? You're going to make me like you."
I realize he might mean like in more ways than one,
meaning he might fall for me
and he might become like me
and I might become like him.
The day we broke up, he kissed me and said, "Please don't hate me."
My homophobic ex-boyfriend sends me angry emails when I break up with him.
My homophobic ex-boyfriend says I'm paranoid.
My homophobic ex-boyfriend invites me over to eat trout with him and have "fun"
I'd love to, but I have plans tonight.
I'm going to a Queer poetry slam at a coffee house to read this poem.
My homophobic ex-boyfriend is a lesbian in a man's body.
My lesbian friend laughs when I tell her about this and says
"I like my lesbians to have actual lesbian bodies."
My homophobic ex-boyfriend feels discriminated against because he is a straight white male.
My homophobic ex-boyfriend has never hit a woman.
My homoophobic ex-boyfriend thinks for himself.
My homophobic ex-boyfriend was attracted to who I am.
My homophobic ex-boyfriend gave me permission to write shit about him on this blog, as long as I stay away from his son
And don't bother him at work
My homophobic ex-boyfriend likes King Kong and Godzilla
My homophobic ex-boyfriend likes Mothra
My homophobic ex-boyfriend likes Bjork and U2
My homophobic ex-boyfriend couldn't stand all my angst
It kept him up at night.
My homophobic is an artist and a writer.
My homophobic ex-boyfriend smokes pot and hates his mother.
My homophobic ex-boyfriend says that Norman Bates says that a man's best friend is his mother.
My homophobic ex-boyfriend is not a Republican.
My homophobic ex-boyfriend is a Pagan.
My homophobic ex-boyfriend once said, "Why do you have to be so cool? You're going to make me like you."
I realize he might mean like in more ways than one,
meaning he might fall for me
and he might become like me
and I might become like him.
The day we broke up, he kissed me and said, "Please don't hate me."
My homophobic ex-boyfriend sends me angry emails when I break up with him.
My homophobic ex-boyfriend says I'm paranoid.
My homophobic ex-boyfriend invites me over to eat trout with him and have "fun"
I'd love to, but I have plans tonight.
I'm going to a Queer poetry slam at a coffee house to read this poem.
American Nightmare
After James Arthur
The red, white, and blue lights
of a white Ford Crown Victoria
flash in my rearview.
A mix of local punk from a student ghetto free box
"You and I could be lovers on the run in 1933"
drowns out the roly-poly siren.
Ford decided to retire the model this year.
I pull onto a side street. I got a warning last time.
The news won't be good.
I expect citations, but not hancuffs.
He makes me stand against my sky-blue Hyundai Accent
and pats me down.
Boyish with a crew cut,
he reminds me of my brother, the Army captain.
It is night.
Soon I'm in Orwell's place of no darkness.
The sun shone as I drove to Carlsbad
one of the last times I saw my mother
before she died of stage four liver cancer.
Driving too fast, I got pulled over.
Life and death happen and make one forget
trivialities like unpaid traffic tickets.
In the holding cell, I tell a woman with cranberry eyes
proverbial ghetto trash
about something I read online about
warning signs that one is in a bad relationship.
A good feminist, I say she doesn't have to stay
with the boyfriend who gave her the bruises she displays
on her body.
I can't remember where.
I have always had problems with insomnia.
I watch the waif coming down from heroin,
blowing her nose on my black cashmere sweater.
Valerie Stevens,
a thrift store find, but still.
Thinking my experience was interesting
is a defense mechanism.
The red, white, and blue lights
of a white Ford Crown Victoria
flash in my rearview.
A mix of local punk from a student ghetto free box
"You and I could be lovers on the run in 1933"
drowns out the roly-poly siren.
Ford decided to retire the model this year.
I pull onto a side street. I got a warning last time.
The news won't be good.
I expect citations, but not hancuffs.
He makes me stand against my sky-blue Hyundai Accent
and pats me down.
Boyish with a crew cut,
he reminds me of my brother, the Army captain.
It is night.
Soon I'm in Orwell's place of no darkness.
The sun shone as I drove to Carlsbad
one of the last times I saw my mother
before she died of stage four liver cancer.
Driving too fast, I got pulled over.
Life and death happen and make one forget
trivialities like unpaid traffic tickets.
In the holding cell, I tell a woman with cranberry eyes
proverbial ghetto trash
about something I read online about
warning signs that one is in a bad relationship.
A good feminist, I say she doesn't have to stay
with the boyfriend who gave her the bruises she displays
on her body.
I can't remember where.
I have always had problems with insomnia.
I watch the waif coming down from heroin,
blowing her nose on my black cashmere sweater.
Valerie Stevens,
a thrift store find, but still.
Thinking my experience was interesting
is a defense mechanism.
Wheel Throwing
I wrote this for Not Made in China Pottery Studio
If you’ve seen the movie Ghost, you know what wheel throwing is. “Throwing” is the term potters use for building clay vessels on the wheel. There are several steps to throwing. The first step is called centering. In centering, you slam a ball of clay onto the wheel with enough force to make it stick. Using a sponge, add just enough water to make it slippery. Use your left leg as force behind your arm and wrap your hand around the clay to push it up. Your other hand should be behind but not pressing hard. To push the clay back down, have your arm against your stomach and push away from your body. Do this several times until the clay doesn’t move when you place your hands on it.
After the clay has been centered, you’re ready to open up your piece. Place your hands on either side and dip your thumbs in to create a well. Press down close to the bottom of the piece. Using a needle tool, measure to make sure the bottom is about three-quarters of an inch thick. Use a tool to flatten out the bottom. Now you are ready to begin building the walls.
To build the walls, hold one finger on the inside of the vessel and the other on the outside. Use your thumb on the outside wall to make a groove. Bring your fingers up to the top of the vessel and let go gently. After your walls are at the desired thickness and height, you’re ready to shape the vessel.
To shape the vessel walls, hold the tool at up to a 45-degree angle. Turn it until the walls are at a desired shape. Now you are ready to remove the vessel.
To remove a finished piece, use a wire tool to slide beneath it. Wet the wheel with water to create a slippery surface. Reach your hands behind the piece and gently push it off the wheel onto a bat or other flat surface.
Next time: Hand Building
If you’ve seen the movie Ghost, you know what wheel throwing is. “Throwing” is the term potters use for building clay vessels on the wheel. There are several steps to throwing. The first step is called centering. In centering, you slam a ball of clay onto the wheel with enough force to make it stick. Using a sponge, add just enough water to make it slippery. Use your left leg as force behind your arm and wrap your hand around the clay to push it up. Your other hand should be behind but not pressing hard. To push the clay back down, have your arm against your stomach and push away from your body. Do this several times until the clay doesn’t move when you place your hands on it.
After the clay has been centered, you’re ready to open up your piece. Place your hands on either side and dip your thumbs in to create a well. Press down close to the bottom of the piece. Using a needle tool, measure to make sure the bottom is about three-quarters of an inch thick. Use a tool to flatten out the bottom. Now you are ready to begin building the walls.
To build the walls, hold one finger on the inside of the vessel and the other on the outside. Use your thumb on the outside wall to make a groove. Bring your fingers up to the top of the vessel and let go gently. After your walls are at the desired thickness and height, you’re ready to shape the vessel.
To shape the vessel walls, hold the tool at up to a 45-degree angle. Turn it until the walls are at a desired shape. Now you are ready to remove the vessel.
To remove a finished piece, use a wire tool to slide beneath it. Wet the wheel with water to create a slippery surface. Reach your hands behind the piece and gently push it off the wheel onto a bat or other flat surface.
Next time: Hand Building
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