Tuesday, January 12, 2010

It's ridiculous really. Since becoming a creative writing major, my writing output in about half of what it once was. This could be due in part to the response papers I have been producing like they are in season year round. I do have some poems I will be posting. The most recent was inspired by advanced poetry class. Our first line was given, and we were to base the rest of the poem around it.

Aqua Marine

I opened a box of my favorite postcards
on the day that Marge, my mother, died. My insides collide when I remember
how her bleached-flour-skin rusted to a chocolaty leather in sunshine.
She went to the beach on the second week of every month,
puckering kisses under the brim of her pastel hat, pretending she sincerely didn't want gone. Faking roses and hearts with her fuchsia lipstick, she'd say, "Kid, you're my big man now. Help nanna and watch your sister good while mommy catches sunshine."
Two days later the post cards would come in stacks of threes and fives, holograming the glitter of a thousand computer-enhanced, aqua-marine beaches.
Mostly five for Sunday- three on Monday. Thursday there were none. The
longer she was gone, the less she missed our pasty, jam speckled fingers and snot nosed wails.
When I lost the second tooth on my top gums, I called Marge. At the beach
she bought a phony picture of a beached whale smiling at the dentist who victoriously held up an over sized tooth.
Beach water isn't aqua marine blue. Whales don't have teeth. Crying over mite bitten postcards only makes my eyes sea salty. Postcards, funerals, and poetry.
I want gone more than
a skin cancered Marge- may she rest in peace.

rust (n.)

O.E. rust, related to rudu "redness," from P.Gmc. *rusta- (cf. Fris. rust, O.H.G., Ger. rost, M.Du. ro(e)st), from PIE *reudh-s-to- (cf. Lith. rustas "brownish," rudeti "to rust;" L. robigo, O.C.S. ruzda "rust"), from base *reudh- "red." The verb is attested from c.1225. As a plant disease, attested from c.1340. Rust Belt "dacayed urban industrial areas of mid-central U.S." (1984) was popularized, if not coined, by Walter Mondale's presidential campaign