Experimental: Mine

This is an experimental piece. It falls somewhere between poetry and prose and it deals with the idea of author ownership. There are things in this poem that are just for me to understand and love. I'm not trying so hard to convey a concrete idea/image to you the reader, so maybe you will not find one. Maybe you will just be carried on by the words and pictures I did use and feel a question or an emotion. Maybe you will hate it, and that's okay too.

Mine

An inventory:

Two lips indifferent blue

Eight ceiling stars soaked in glow in the dark paint

23 typos in a story about slugs

One newt or else a salamander or snake                                     I keep him in a safety deposit box

I label him with red pen

I organize her into star charts  

A decade old and I made the solar system—foam sitting on a dark matter poster board. Twelve and I made the ocean—earth fired and glazed into waves. 19 and I cannot fold an origami woman nor do I have the paper to begin. I substitute skin and follicles with a red hot itch. My face is three layers deep.

I need to peel out the sheet in the middle that fizzes like a hot tub when the jets are off. I need to soak the boiling oil out her pores. He wants ice that is cold enough to stop indifferent lips from moving or changing hues. But who do I tell.

 

Plastic stars don’t get to shine without the sun, so make paper ones instead and fill them with words that mean sounds that mean nothing unless they get heard. Wonder if you accidentally put them in place of the salamander. Wonder if safety deposit boxes are sound proof. Worry that you lost the key so far from skeleton but so deep within her bones. It landed with four of the ceiling stars, a pinch of salt, and a thumb tack.

Her banker doesn’t know the combination. Nobody has a spare. They don’t understand what is locked away. She signed the dotted line in a foreign language but it was still binding. She never meant to keep so many things.

She is not origami neatly folded. She is blown into glass at 2000 degrees and capped by the strawberry jam lid of a mason jar. Paper pokes into her edges.

Inventory:

24 typos in a story about a girl and all of them written in invisible ink.

Permission

She sits, wondering waiting

Why is it that she’s so alone

 There’s so much to see, so much to do,

 But its all empty all dust

 All vanity

Nothing is worth the loneliness. Alone

Afraid

She stands. Walks around, what is there to see? Visions she’s seen a thousand times

Pictures engraved into her lonely mind that have forever been there

Images of a life she never knew painted onto

pages and canvases

And then she is gone, 

out past her mind 

past the gaping window 

and she is flying

her fears are left behind and she is free. 

She passes people, houses, smiles and laughs.

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Dear Reader, this is the first unfinished, unpolished, unposted draft that I found waiting for me on my return to this blog. I can honestly say I don't know what was going on in my life when I wrote it. I don't even remember if it came from my perspective or a character piece. I know I took the photo. I don't know why I didn't post it.

I make a lot of excuses, I don't have time, no one will read it...do I even want people to read it. I have a very particular thing about deleting and starting over--I don't just like to get things right, I like to get them right the first time. Maybe this is why I have never changed my Instagram username, or why I have trouble starting papers. Maybe it's why I have trouble sometimes producing art.

This year I learned a lot about permission. I learned about vulnerability and being wrong and making things messily, trying extremes. I learned that you have to let yourself be connected to your art--to own what your character did, be okay with letting people see parts of them in you, whether that character is onstage or on a page (or screen).

I like to post things that are concise, I don't like to explain (or I explain too much). I don't like to ramble. I like to be profound and artistic, but that limits me. I have been inspired by a dear friends blog--someone who is sharing life with her audience (shout-out: you know exactly who you are)--and I know I want to write. Maybe I just need to give myself permission.

I have also been inspired that I now have people in my life who I believe would read my blog (however infrequently) and who might just might care about it. And that terrifies me! But at the same time... thrills me. And I thought about it and, yes, I like it a little that people actually read my stuff--I guess maybe its selfish or showing off, but if I'm going to wait to make things until my motives are completely pure--No more art for me.

So here's whats going to happen reader,
First, I'm going to call you reader when I feel like it. I liked this idea a lot (#stolen or inspired, whichever you choose to believe) and it makes me less inclined to be profound or perfect. Plus it reminds me someone in fact might be out there!

Second, I am going to post. I don't know what, I don't know how often, but I am going to give myself permission to post rough drafts, unfinished pieces, opinions that I might contradict later, observations about life. I even want to do some videos of pieces read out-loud and link them here, but lets not get carried away.

Thirdly, I am going to ask you to continue reading. It challenges me. I might write a separate post about why later, but to have people I know reading my work--it is a good kind of difficult.

Excerpt from Grape Flavored Death

Dancing on Tile Floors and Climbing Ladders

chapter piece from my WIP, Grape Flavored Death: and other adult observations

You know that pinching aching feeling that you get when your calluses bend in at too sharp an angle? Like when you put your foot down and the skin folds, but it’s so hard it can’t flex anymore? Funny how the armor you have built up from joyful pain and sharp rocks creates something that hurts you more.

            I was walking through a half-path in the forest, cringing as my tender skin touched branches and sharp stems, and rocks so small they stuck to the sweat. Every step my face contorted as I prepared myself for the sting. “Wow, you need to build up some calluses,” my friend retorted. She had to turn her head at an awkward angle over her shoulder because she was so far ahead of me and my feet. I wanted to tell her that last week I would have been fine. I wanted to paint for her images of peeling skin revealing pink and contrasting with the unnatural blue of the nail salon’s pedicure tub. I wanted to tell her that something made me vulnerable, that I let down my guard and let an Asian woman peel away the past. I wanted to complain that all my hard work was gone and I shouldn’t have spent the forty bucks.

            But I also wanted to tell her of the bliss. The teal petals dripping along pale toenails in my prom shoes… I wanted to say how nice it felt when Maria complemented my color choice. I looked down at my mud covered feet and saw the remains of peach lingering at the tip of my big toe. It was chipped and there was dirt edging its way under the paint. I wanted that color to be vibrant and at the same time I wanted my calluses. I wanted to enjoy the forest path. But I flinched as a rock that had been persistently stuck drove deeper into the crevice of my sole.

It’s been maybe a year since then, and I can touch the bottom of my heel without being aware of any sensation. The stiff padding is white around the edges where one thin layer slowly peels, revealing hundreds of dead hard cells beneath it. I like to go barefoot outside because I know wood chips won’t hurt me and rocks can bear to scrape a few layers without pain. But sometimes I wish I had a callus shaver that could pare down a few layers.

            I was wearing heels at a dance and quickly noticed the inconvenience of an extra inches, so I tossed the nude pumps in a corner. My feet liked to feel the floor below, but it was tile held in line by lines of mortar. These valleys dip low and pull skin into a ‘u’ shape, small and uncomfortable. For the skin that can mold--that can adapt to the new experience and accept its beauty-- there is little to no pain. But the callused feet, built up to withstand the sharp reality outside becomes sharp itself, scrunching into a stubborn ‘v’. I don’t know when I began to notice it or if I ever stopped, but the dance kept reminding me of walls instead of freedom. And I wished I had painted my nails.

Now here I am climbing ladders into lofted beds, and my feet pinch sometimes. The ‘v’ digs deep into nerves and into memory, reminding me to buy a callus shaver and some teal nail polish. 

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I've been vaguely working on a NanoWrimo project. It's a half personal half fiction piece formatted in a House on Mango Street style. This segment is based off real observations and situations, but not quite true to my perspective.