R.A. Villanueva Pt. 1 #writetoday

For each day of National Poetry Month one of our fellows will explore the breadth of poetry in three ways: through a question from another fellow, through a poem and through a writing prompt, #writetoday.

[QUESTION]

Tarfia Faizullah asks, Do you think it’s possible to stop writing about the past?

R.A. Villanueva answers, No. And if we’re really honest with ourselves as writers, I don’t think we really want to stop remembering—to Eternal Sunshine our way around the aftermaths that matter.

Perhaps the reality is that the past makes and mars us in ways we can neither control nor anticipate. Better to find some “ceremony of words to patch the havoc” than to live as amnesiacs. Better to dive into the wreck than try to forget the sinking.

[POEM]

Swarm

We were well down the ventral axis 

          when Fr. Luke noticed. Our cuts 

steady through the skin, our scalpels 

          already through the thin give 

of the sternum. With each bullfrog 

          pinned to its block and double- 

pithed by nail, he had by then 

          talked us clean through the lungs, 

past a three-chambered heart couched 

          in tissue and vascular dye. We must 

have been deeper among the viscera 

          when he heard us laughing, 

not at the swarm of black eggs 

          spilling from the oviducts to 

slime the cuffs of our blazers, 

          but at a phallus, jury-rigged from 

foil and rubber bands hanging off the crucifix, 

          hovering above a chart of light- 

independent reactions. This was nothing 

          like the boys lowing through recitation 

their antiphon for the layman whose wife 

          we heard was trampled by livestock 

over Trimester break. Nothing at all 

          like Sr. Mary being made to face 

the bathhouse scene from Spartacus in slow- 

          motion or her freshmen rewinding again 

and again stock films of chariot drivers pitched 

          from their mounts, dragged 

to their ends only to float backwards, 

          hands bound up once more 

in the reins. The Dean of Men confessed 

          he knew of no prayer or demerit 

that could redeem such disgrace, 

          could conceive of no greater sin 

against the Corpus. Transgressors, all of you, 

          he said and closed the door behind him, 

refusing to look at us or the thing 

          which seemed to shimmer and twitch 

with each frog’s reflex kick against our forceps. 

          He held us there far beyond 

the last bell, waiting for just one among us 

          to want forgiveness or for a single boy 

to take back this mockery of the body 

          our Lord had made.

Originally published in AGNI, #70

[BIO]

R.A. Villanueva is the author of Reliquaria, winner of the 2013 Prairie Schooner Book Prize. A founding editor ofTongue: A Journal of Writing & Art, he lives in Brooklyn.

Tarfia Faizullah, Pt. 1: It wanted to learn / how to carry the word

For each day of National Poetry Month one of our fellows will explore the breadth of poetry in three ways: through a question from another fellow, through a poem and through a writing prompt, #writetoday.

[QUESTION]

Muriel Leung asks, If you were the architect of a city with poetry as your only tool, what type of city would you build? Would you describe it for us?

Tarfia Faizullah answers, Detroit. 

[POEM]

The Scar

That’s when the scar stitched my shoulder whole

until it grew thick,

     a husk

never filling
              with breath
                            or light—

above me
        it twisted

like ant-eaten bark         It rubbed

between his thighs
              while mosquitoes brooded

Oh, their kiss-
                           hungry mouths             It skinned

              lake-water          like a scythe

It wanted to learn
                           how to carry the word

           cauterize

until the ochre sky wished itself
                                                     amber,

until the skin broke—

                             and that’s when the scar revealed a woman

trapped                 wet

               shaped like an ebony

                                                       tusk

Previously published in Makeout Creek.

[BIO]

 

Tarfia Faizullah is the author of Seam (Southern Illinois University Press) and and can be found at www.tfaizullah.com.

Muriel Leung, Pt. 1: What you say next—I am red / in the face. I will and can harp on a spleen.

For each day of National Poetry Month one of our fellows will explore the breadth of poetry in three ways: through a question from another fellow, through a poem and through a writing prompt, #writetoday.

[QUESTION]

Cristiana Balk asks, You recently uprooted yourself from Queens, one of the most demographically diverse urban places in the world (and personally my favorite borough in NYC), to Baton Rouge, nestled near the heart of Louisiana. Has this significant shift in place changed, re-shaped your writing, from writing practices to the subject matters you explore, and if so, how?

Muriel Leung answers, I packed my bags with my ghosts in search of new ghosts. Someone said I would find plenty in Louisiana. In my first month here, I smashed my car mirror trying to dodge a banana tree. A monster cactus in my backyard lives and dies on repeat. I wondered if that was what they meant. Louisiana is still grappling with its reputation as a place of magic and haunting. I am careful not to be subsumed by this, but growing up in Queens, I bring with me so much baggage (immigrant stories, forked tongues, etc.) that feels magical and haunting to me out of necessity. For me, Louisiana is a collision of the real and the imagined too. I am fortunate for a literary community here (that includes my fierce mentors, Laura Mullen and Lara Glenum) who insist: “Write your ghosts and—“ Within this gesture—possibilities in the whirl.

[POEM]

Directions for a better life

Or simply you would complete me 
the sinewy voice milks the trees and ornery 
blossoms. What you say next—I am red 
in the face. I will and can harp on a spleen. 
In the sidelines of a purple desert, a mote 
erects itself between dashboard 
and a vein. Sometimes I believe 
in the virtues of a robotic dusk. I believe 
in dirty thoughts and my gummy hands 
going this way and then that. Are you feeling 
better now? Good. Rest your pretty head 
on a briar patch. Sweet nothings. I think 
when I whisper, someone is pushing 
a button and saying, Now move into 
the happily before they take down the sun 
and so I take his hand and pulse hard 
into the forever-morgue. My darling, 
I will go wherever you go.

[BIO]

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Muriel Leung is a current MFA candidate in poetry at Louisiana State University and sends her tweets here.

Cristiana Baik, Pt. 2 #writetoday

Think about a situation, person, place, you’ve long wanted to write about. Write a short list of words that you associate with this memory (up to 10 words). Grab a recording device and for two minutes, talk about/through this memory (use the list of words as catalysts, if you need to). Listen to the recording, then write a sonnet—a loose version of a sonnet or strictly abiding to one of its conventional forms, up to you—incorporating phrases, words from the recording.

Cristiana Baik, Pt. 1: Fifty-eight orchid species are native to the Lake Superior basin, their nomenclature of feminine seduction:

For each day of National Poetry Month one of our fellows will explore the breadth of poetry in three ways: through a question from another fellow, through a poem and through a writing prompt, #writetoday.

[QUESTION]

Soham Patel asks, Why the long face? Why round belly laughs?

Cristiana Baik answers, Do I have a long face [laughing]?Two years ago, my partner and I drove a U-Haul from New York to Minnesota, which kicked off a long period of disruptions. I’ve moved more than anyone else I know, having never lived in a place for more than three years since going to college. In Chicago (where I went to school) I began to write poetry, which became intricately tied with experiences of displacement and being othered. Water is commonly a theme in my work, because bodies of water have always told me where I am. It’s been a universal marker, no matter where I’ve lived (Los Angeles: the Pacific; Chicago: Lake Michigan; Tuscaloosa: Black Warrior River; Duluth, MN: Lake Superior). This is a long-winded way of saying I’m sure the long face has something to do with constant destabilizations, which have also created fertile grounding for critical thinking and poems.

Round belly laughs: it’s about keeping it real.

[POEM]

Essentially Description

                          For Ian

We cross Blatnik Bridge
the view
of the bay opening
the lake
a porous border
where every ear finds a buoy
           a waveform to lean in towards

We knew
there was no looking back
just around

       Four-day drive, Woodside to Duluth
       Fifth day, the U-Haul crosses the bridge

It was autumnal, the atmosphere carnelian
washing the evergreens, steeples,
and industry
We walk to Sir Benedict’s Tavern
and drink in silence, realizing
this was home

                     the trope of a swinging door 

Ω

I recall writing poems
all essentially descriptions
of light splitting
the lake’s surface
spectral, an emerald
shield exposed
the lake telling me
in ripples
               the present rippling time
its so forths, so ons 

Ω

It’s only upon leaving that I learn the facts:

Lake Superior’s 3,000,000,000,000,000 gallons could flood continents

Over 300 streams and rivers empty into Lake Superior

Fifty-eight orchid species are native to the Lake Superior basin, their nomenclature of feminine seduction:

          Stemless lady-slipper
          Slender ladies tresses
          Purple tresses
          Heart-leaf twayblade
          Nodding ladies

These facts tracking my Midwest 

Ω

Then in a dream, the flood begins

The scene is a painting, a placement, a viewpoint:
                the edge of evergreens, birch, pine
                the edge cerulean, indigo, sometimes sleet-grey, sometimes all-white

There is sound, water’s refining
of limestone, sandstone, Thompsonite, agates

I wake to an inland sea
water the essential description
from Point Barrow to Tierra del Fuego

[BIO]

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Cristiana Baik is a poet who resides in New York City. She works at ART21 and is the Managing Editor of Essay Press and The Conversan

Soham Patel, Pt. 2 #writetoday

Conduct a “Google Image” search that looks something like this:

“portraits of __[patels]___”  …

but insert instead any one of your names or family names (your sir name or your good name - mother’s/maiden or middle).  Of course you might see yourself. 

Pick one portrait from the search results and focus on it for three minutes.  Write three lines that about that face. 

Now think of one of your family members, given or chosen.  Think about that person’s face for three more minutes and write three lines about that face you are remembering.

(Because Bushra’s question made me remember the days when my foi was dying some years back and how we gathered in the next room for laughing yoga so she could hear the happy sound, I conducted a “Google Video” search of “family laughing” just to see what would come up).

Put your left hand on your stomach while you watch this, the first video that came up and when it is over write three lines describing what your body felt like while you watched it.

Write three more lines—about searching.  Use these words:  type, return [or enter], and scroll.

Rinse and repeat (revise) as needed.  I look forward to reading.

Soham Patel, Pt. 1:To hear // It sounds like something breaking / in unison with the cat’s / meow

For each day of National Poetry Month one of our fellows will explore the breadth of poetry in three ways: through a question from another fellow, through a poem and through a writing prompt, #writetoday.

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[QUESTION]

Bushra Rehman asks, Soham, I loved your series which took place in a motel and concerned the lives of a family of characters. Could you speak to the ways in which location and the idea of family influence your work?

Soham Patel answers, The first drafts of the writing in Riva:  A Chapter came from a fiction workshop with Carol Guess at Western Washington University.  We were reading “The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things” and something about the way the setting of the truck stops are written about in that book reminded me of one of my first jobs, which was cleaning rooms in my mom and dad’s motel—and so the character of Riva was born from there.  Ongoing:  location and family—they both influence the work because they are holding in my body.  I’m keen on how both at once have a certain permanence and also are always changing.  Sometimes the thought of a particular location place will remind me to breathe in another way and so the writing’s rhythm changes.  Sometimes the idea of family has me remember particularities of my body parts (my nose looks like my dad’s looks like my nephew’s) and that translates into the work by way of association, image, or idea. 

[POEM]

portrait in sound:

Blood-rushed, ears call in
framed fragment clips nightly
(purple lobe, remembered
piercing popped discord
mesh to silence). To hear

It sounds like something breaking
in unison with the cat’s
meow in the background:
braided luck and deliberation.

(To hear listeners shore up
and stop will mean no more
air in the bladder of the fish.)
She said the sensation was some-
thing like a throb in her heart.

[BIO]

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Soham Patel’s other chapbook is ‘and nevermind the storm’ (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs).    

Bushra Rehman, Pt. 1: Visions of you played / like two second sitcoms

For each day of National Poetry Month one of our fellows will explore the breadth of poetry in three ways: through a question from another fellow, through a poem and through a writing prompt, #writetoday.

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[QUESTION]

marlon esguerra asks,  For the writer, what is a lie? Does (or rather, how does) your telling and retelling of your stories alter your memory of a subject?

Bushra Rehman answers, Of course I am afraid like most writers that I will be accused of lying when I write. But I know it’s inevitable to be accused. Everyone has a version of the truth which is equally valid, even a person I would disagree with intensely.

So being a writer, like I am, who is slightly political-the slightly was a joke- I get accused of not telling the truth because I did not represent someone else’s experience accurately. This is the burden of representation in American literature for someone like me, a Pakistani writer from New York City.

Still, I write fiction, by definition a liar’s art. I love recreating my memories the way I remember them, like little dioramas in my brain, reliving my favorites and spinning some into daydreams to enhance the pleasure of reliving them. 

[POEM]

Simply Knocking on the Air

I willed you from the air
Or did I simply hear you knocking?

Visions of you played
like two second sitcoms
in my brain.

There you were in a diaper
on the stream rocks.

There you were
catching baby trout
in your fingers.

Before you were born,
I heard whispers
in the forest and dawn.

I reached back to grab hold
of the cord which tied me
to my grandmother.

She willed this too from the beyond.

[BIO]

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Bushra Rehman’s first novel Corona, a dark comedy about being South Asian in the United States was noted among Poets & Writers Best Debut Fiction, featured in the LA Review of Books among a new wave of South Asian American Literature and is a LAMBDA finalist. 

marlon esguerra, pt. 2 #writetoday

Hey, I found a prompt in my answer to Todd’s question—

Try to speed read a piece of writing and then translate it in your own words, in your own voice. Try it with a poem you’ve never read before; do it with one of your favorite poems; hell, do it with one of your own poems. Just suppress any subvocalization (internal speech) and go for it—chalk up as many words as you can. See what or who or what new makes it through the suppression.

marlon esguerra, pt. 1: My teachers, all / warned me away from / allnoneevery,

For each day of National Poetry Month one of our fellows will explore the breadth of poetry in three ways: through a question from another fellow, through a poem and through a writing prompt, #writetoday.

[QUESTION]

W. Todd Kaneko asks, "Your performances are so dynamic and passionate. What is it about spoken word and performance that we should be thinking about as poets? Moreover, how do you navigate performativity with the written word as you are writing poems for the page?"

marlon esguerra answers, You can’t speed read a poem. You just can’t. I’ve tried. You try it some time. In fact, do it right now. Try it with a poem you’ve never read before; do it with one of your favorite poems; hell, do it with one of your own poems. Just suppress any subvocalization (internal speech) and go for it—chalk up as many words as you can.

 There ya go: Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot. What did I just read?

 Poems are a form of speech, in every sense of the word speech. I don’t write poems for the page, or performance poems, or slam poems, or spoken word pieces. I write and I write and I write some more. I read my poems aloud when they’re young and timid and have no line breaks but the cadence of my breathing. I’ll stand and walk around, reading aloud—now there’s the cadence of my slow pacing. My partner writes and we read our poems aloud to each other. We don’t read news articles to each other—that’s a terrible use of one’s voice; that’s what speed reading is for.

As someone who has carved such a wonderful home and community in the spoken world, I navigate my known world in finding congruity between the subvocalized and vocalized; “between what I see and what I say,” as Octavio Paz said. My audience these days are less in number—sometimes my 10th period Chemistry class in the last five minutes before the bell, other times just a cat trying to commandeer my laptop as his bed. But page or stage, the community exists—you are writing and speaking it into existence. You find your loves this way. You find your voice this way. There’s no half-steppin’ it. So speak! 

[POEM]

a disambiguation of limbo
-after speed reading Mark Strand’s Keeping Things Whole

My teachers, all
warned me away from
allnoneevery, always
steered me safely
from alwaysmustnever.
dangerous territory, must
not confine my geography.

My father always gambled.
A priest never touched me.
Every church is a black box.
I must have deserved it, there
must be a universe where none
of this happened again and again
to always.
I have a degree in words.
I have an advanced degree in teaching words.
I have schooled and schooled and nonetheless
and none the worse and none the better
all these universes exist. They, or none, must.

[BIO]

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marlon unas esguerra lives & works in queens. When he isn’t running marathons or ultras, he stops long enough to write and teach high school english, U.S. history, physics, chemistry, earth science and robotics. He’s working on a collection of essays, short stories, and poems based on his first 15 years of teaching, entitled, “Freshman 15.” 

For each day of National Poetry Month one of our fellows will explore the breadth of poetry in three ways: through a question from another fellow, through a poem and through a writing prompt, #writetoday.

[QUESTION]

Iris Law asks, Your forthcoming book is called The Dead Wrestler Elegies. What drew you to wrestling as a subject of your poetry and the overarching conceit of this project? If you were a pro wrestler, what would your in-ring persona be?

W. Todd Kaneko answers,

1. Because when I was a kid, I watched professional wrestling with my father.

2. Because professional wrestling is a marker of American cultural identity.

3. Because of legendary characters and modern mythologies.

4. Because people are still obsessed with what is real and what is fake.

5. Because of manly eloquence.

6. Because when I was a kid I wanted to grow up to be a professional wrestler.

7. Because I still want to grow up to be a professional wrestler, sometimes.

8. Because professional wrestling is the poetry of violence.

9. Because it’s still real to me.

10. Because.

[POEM]

Luna Vachon is Your Shadow in the Darkness    

   Our history is rich with pain and venom, violence and evil …
   from this day forward, I will hunt your very breath, I will be
   your shadow in the darkness. And then soon, very very soon,
   I will wipe you from this earth.”
       —Luna Vachon, professional wrestler

She is butcher and goddess, a throat
full of grackles, a vampire’s grin.

She is snake tongue, fistmonger and kill
bride—she is hunger. She is the lightning
eye, the rooster’s spurs. Your father
will show you his skeleton one day,
your mother the taint of her blood.

The cemetery is no place for women
slung out in halter tops and bare mid-riffs.
Where there is no such thing as death,
there is only death. She is that ravenous
spirit chewing your name.

She is the lunacy that comes
with grief, lizard tail and owl heart,
a hound driven mad by streetlights
mistaken for the moon. She is the ear
spider, the winter branches.

Her skin is the color of woe. She is
the tombstone, the meantime.
She is a hooked angel excavating
your father with obsidian claws.
She is your mother telling you a story.

First published in Rhino Poetry.

[BIO]

W. Todd Kaneko is the author of The Dead Wrestler Elegies (Curbside Splendor 2014) and teaches at Grand Valley State University in Michigan.

Iris Law, Pt. 2 #writetoday

Write an “unromantic” love poem: for example, an ode to something grotesque; an aubade for someone (or something) other than an object of romantic interest; or a poem that expresses tenderness by refusing the typical imagery of love poems for a conceit that would normally be seen as mundane, ugly, awkward, or even slightly disgusting (think Donne’s “The Flea”).

Iris Law, Pt. 1 rain pearling my gut like sweat,

For each day of National Poetry Month one of our fellows will explore the breadth of poetry in three ways: through a question from another fellow, through a poem and through a writing prompt, #writetoday.

[QUESTION]

Eugenia Leigh asks, What is a yet-to-be-realized desire of yours as it pertains to writing? (e.g. a topic you have not yet explored in your poetry/prose but have wanted to explore or a different kind of life-circumstance risk you have not yet taken?)

Iris Law responds, I’d love to try writing a series inspired by Christian scripture and liturgy (a book of hours, of sorts). And it would be fun to extend my women scientist project (from my chapbook) to include contemporary women in STEM. Secretly, though, what I’d really love is to complete a long-form piece: a long poem, a hybrid novel, a book-length narrative series, a play. I have a short attention span and have trouble sustaining long arcs or complex threads. I’m terrible at projects that require attention to the big picture, but good at honing in on tiny details. My poems have always been short, and I tend to whittle them down even more through obsessive revision. But someday, I’d like to struggle through seeing a longer project to completion. I think it would help me to address a lot of my fears about what I can and can’t do as a writer.

[POEM]

A poem is like a kiss,

like the darting of pupils
just past the tips of one’s lashes
mid breath: too close, too quick,

the shadow of thought
too thick on one’s shoulders
to justify sight. I close my eyes

and listen to you recite—
to your mouth gently lipping
the tail of each word,

the soft fry of vowels
smoldering in the folds
of your throat. I can hear

a world in there, epiglottal
behind the dark-wet sheen
of each consonant’s strike.

You speak, and the warm
flush of sound pulses, light,
at the base of my ears.

You look at me with the pitch
of those ball-peen eyes
and the weather moves through me,

rain pearling my gut like sweat,
high-gale gusts exhuming
the breath from my lungs.

[BIO]

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Iris A. Law is the author of a chapbook, Periodicity, and a founding editor of Lantern Review.

Eugenia Leigh, Pt. 1: What I wouldn’t give to graze that silence.

For each day of National Poetry Month one of our fellows will explore the breadth of poetry in three ways: through a question from another fellow, through a poem and through a writing prompt, #writetoday.

[QUESTION]

Michelle Penaloza asks, I have my pop icon obsessions:

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Who are yours? Have you ever written about them? (I have tried various poems about all of these people, but have yet to be pleased with any). Please answer with pictures of your celebrity artists obsessions, elaborating upon your obsessions as you like!

Eugenia Leigh answers, 

This question exposes my humiliating secret: I have little to no knowledge about celebrity culture. It’s true. I feel both ashamed and irrelevant, and I considered purchasing a box of old People magazines (is that what I’m supposed to read?!) to answer this question. I was raised in a hyper-strict religious environment & listened to only church songs (or the Beatles or Air Supply because my parents had their weaknesses) until I was 12 and discovered my alarm clock was also a fancy radio. Yes, I’m making excuses.

 One of the only poems I’ve written with a direct reference to a contemporary artist is “Every Hair on Your Head” (posted below), which was written on March 6, 2010, the day Mark Linkous, the musician behind Sparklehorse, took his life. I looped the song “Hundreds of Sparrows” over and over again at El Beit, a coffee shop in Williamsburg, and wrote this poem.

[POEM]

Every Hair on Your Head

Every hair on your head is counted.
You are worth hundreds of sparrows.

                        — Sparklehorse, “Hundreds of Sparrows”

The day you pushed a bullet through your heart,
the length of a day on earth shortened by a millionth of a second.

That same day, a NASA satellite captured an image of a dust storm,
Chile withstood its one hundred thirtieth aftershock in a week, and I
glimpsed a bird, twitching

on the floor of a Brooklyn metro station. Its eyeballs
bulged as if to literally absorb the ocular world

and I shuddered away. For hours, I saw that flinching
creature in my mind. I saw hundreds of similar birds
shimmering into the station to lie

next to it—a quilt of silvery bodies tiled wing to wing. On good days,
I want to be saved. Most days, I want

every savior in our hell—so they’ll know
torment in the bloodstream—death’s whistling, ceaseless,
blurring the cleanest heartbeats.       My first time, I was thirteen.

I tested five pills. My stomach barely ached, I ate ramen, lived, solved
math problems. But for days before that, I envisioned my body
smeared. Inside out. A swarthy, dazzling canvas.

What I wouldn’t give to graze that silence.

Did you do it standing up
or crouching?     Which was the bigger surprise— the gun punching    or the angel catching you?

Previously published in Best New Poets 2010.

[BIO]

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Eugenia Leigh is the author of Blood, Sparrows and Sparrows (Four Way Books, 2014).

Michelle Penaloza, Pt. 2 #writetoday

Write a poem using repetend, a reoccurring word or phrase, choosing two of the following words: angel, whisky, crow, apology, Braille, enough. Also, use the word “love” not as verb nor as a noun, but as an address to someone.

Time is limited, yet nowadays there is a limitless amount of great literature and art one can take in. What is your criteria for choosing what or whom to read, in terms of growing as a poet?