Junkyard Quote Entry 2 (Week 7)

"You don't think I can love you. Now you've made your choice and you will regret it forever. All you will have is an empty heart and a chipped cup."
-Once Upon A Time

Junkyard Quote Entry 1 (Week 7)

"It happened right here…on the death dancefloor."
-Ghost Adventures

Free Entry 1 (Week 7)

So, using the response from Morgan and David, here is draft two:

I am a self proclaimed pack-rat...

Just like my Grandmother.
A hoarder of knowledge
and school supplies.
Each weekend
I open the door to my father
reminding me of the empty filing cabinet
backed up
against the blank white wall
with its supposed contents
carpeting instead, my closet floor.
Each day,
when questions
to which no one actually wants answers
are asked,
I am the one to respond
pulling and searching from me,
the filing cabinet,
with those discarded closeted files
scattered in piles,
filling the pre-frontal cortex
of my brain.

This made me stop and think for a second.

Reading Response Entry 1 (Week 6)

This is in response to Katie Chaple's Pretty Little Rooms. I like this piece because of the way that Chaple uses the triggering subject and the discovered/end subject. Hugo says that the triggering subject is the idea that you start with: for Chaple, it is the initial article that she read about the body being exhumed and finding that there were two different people in the tomb. That in itself is an interesting way to go about finding something to write about. I want to try that one day: find something random in the paper and write a piece about what it makes me think in regards to the people involved. But then, in the end the discovered subject is revealed to be the idea that the female body is a commodity for science. "Nobody asks: Whose body was not loved enough/ that her skull could travel like a pebble,/could be used to punctuate the line of a man's body?" I love the different connotations of the word "used." It could mean utilized, implement, fulfilled, or "used up," "abused." And then she uses "punctuate the line" and that could mean both the line of the skeleton (the woman's skull is the ending of the man's body) or a line of poetry (its the end of the poem).
These multiple meanings and multiple subjects are what I really enjoy with her poems. I want to utilize that idea in my pieces.

Peer Response Entry 2 (Week 6)

This is a response to David's Calisthenic:

Madagascar

madatgascars

madatfastcars

madatfuriousfastcars

toofastwomadatgascars

immadatthatcar

mattatgascar

mattsagascar

mattsgascaristoofast

toofast

breakfast

madassgascars

madasshattercar

alicegascar

inwonderlandcashcar

wondercashcab

wondercashcabinet

aliceinwondercascade

cascadecairfreshener

 

You said that you thought you weren't very good at this, see I disagree. I feel like with this Modulart  Method, it doesn't matter whether your piece makes sense or not. I really like this one. Especially the first stanza...the way you messed with the spelling of Madagascar was really interesting and surprising to read because I never knew what was going to come next. But, I don't think you need "Breakfast" at the end. It doesn't quite fit with the rest of the piece. I think you could change it to "mattsgascarisfast/toofast" and it would sound more precise...if you didn't want to get rid of "breakfast" you could change to "breakneckfast"...that could be interesting.

Also, with the second stanza, I like how you threw in the wonderland bit. It went off on a different tangent than I expected with Madagascar. But again, I am not sure you need "cascadeairfreshener" at the end. It was a bit confusing...if you changed it to "wondercashcab/wondercashcabinet/aliceinwondercage/madagascagecar"...that would take out the confusing (for me) cascade thing.

But I really liked this, I thought you did a nice job.

Peer Response Entry 1 (Week 6)

This is a response to Brittany's Junkyard Quote "Blue, in almost any shade, is a fugitive paint. (If you've ever owned a blue car or blue jeans, you know what fugitive means.)"
This quote is from that Primary Colors book. I thought the describe of blue as a fugitive paint was interesting."
I have a hard time understanding why blue was described as fugitive. This sounds like something someone would say while critiquing an art piece. That would be a really interesting set of dialogue if there was an art critic and maybe his or her significant other talking about a piece involving a lot of the color blue and the critic throws this phrase out and then the other person has to think about it. I am just stuck on the word fugitive and why the Primary Colors book described it as such, the dialogue would be a fun way for you to explain it.

Improv/ Imitation Entry 1 (Week 6)

I wanted to try my hand at the technique that we learned from Stefano and Giorgia in class on Thursday. The Modulart Method. This is the first time I have ever attempted this, so I am sorry if I fail miserably. Please help if you can.

myapple

myapp

letsmefind

 placestogo

toeat

myapplease

bequiet

tryingtosleep

whileeating

myjuicy

deliciousapple

brightredcolor

pesticidefreegleam

makesmesmile

smilebright

smileright

milerightoffthehighway

totheorchard

wheremyapp

letsmeyap

andfind

my

own

apple

Free Entry 1 (Week 6)

This is an entry that is in the first few stages of writing, so help would be welcomed. I wanted to include a technique that Katie Chaple uses, which is when you use the title as the first line of the poem...


I am a self proclaimed pack-rat...

Just like my Grandmother.
A hoarder of knowledge
and school supplies.
Each weekend
I open the door to my father
reminding me of the filing cabinet
with no files
sitting against the blank wall
in my room.
Each day
when questions,
to which no one wants answers,
are asked,
I am one to respond
reminding me of the filing cabinet
with all the files
sitting against the pre-frontal cortex
of my brain.

Junkyard Quote Entry 4 (Week 6)

I am a self proclaimed packrat,
just like my grandmother.
A horder of knowledge
and school supplies.
--something I said to my friend the other day.

Junkyard Quote Entry 3 (Week 6)

"I love you, in a really, really big pretend to like your taste in music, let you eat the last piece of cheesecake, hold a radio over my head outside your window, unfortunate way that makes me hate you, love you."
-Facebook Status

Calisthenics Entry 1 (Week 6)

Today we did a calisthenic in class where we picked out phrases or words that caught our eye. I found the phrase "Language is a slut" in one of the books that I read and I decided to use that as my Calisthenic...combining today's calisthenic with the one from last week...the dialogue one.


"Language is a slut. She cheats on other languages with each other." Becky looked down at the whites of her nails and picked at the cuticles with her BIC pencil.

"Oh my god! You know who's a slut? Julie Armstrong. She smushed the ENTIRE football team behind the bleachers of the football field last week. Not at one time of course. That would just make her kinky." Jackie shook her head disappointed.

A 16 year old Gears of War addict with blackheads and cysts spotting his face nearly dropped his tray when he tripped over his size 13 sneaker. He looked up apologetically at Jackie, who waved him along with her hand.

"I went to France in July with my parents, hoping to practice my French, but apparently there are fourteen different ways to say blueberries. The languages are so fickle, with all their stupid dialects."

"But you didn't hear that from me." Jackie pleaded. "Oh my god. Have you seen my wardrobe on Pintrest?"

Junkyard Quote Entry 2 (Week 6)

"I don't want my classroom to start acting like a kindergarten, with you all looking at porn and facebook."
-My critical thinking teacher on letting us use our computers in class

Junkyard Quote Entry 1 (Week 6)

"a rhombus is like a square with a gangster lean"
-facebook status

Improv/Imitation Entry 1 (Week 5)

I wanted to imitate one of the poems that I read in Pretty Little Rooms.
I really liked the first stanza in "Wayne, Balanced" and the memorability of the image, so I wanted to imitate it.

The original:
"His talent was equilibrium,
tops of pianos, backs of couches, the side of the tub,
and once, even the roofline.
Poised there, two stories closer to the sun,
arms stretched, half a pimento cheese sandwich in one hand,
he ignored his mother's howl
at seeing him so out of reach."

My version:
"His talent was agility,
tops of cars, the back of the loveseat, the handrail of the staircase,
and once even a basketball hoop.
Perched there, two stories above my head,
legs waving down, slow android phone in one hand,
he basked in the awe
of watching him escape from the binds of the earth."

Peer Response Entry 2 (Week 5)

This is a response to Osa's piece:
When Father Fling

Ijaw fathers fling their babies
into the Ibadan River,
tubes in their navels,

faces cement-cold.
The ones that swim swim.
Mothers cheer
as their little Phelpses go.
Darwin's underwater show

Takes to the sky.
Yoruba fathers hurl their sons,
after puberty,
across the Atlantic, on
seven-hundred and forty seven fowls.
Everyone cheers,
no one weeps.

This scares me a little bit. I love the specificity and the images you write but the concepts are what scare me. I wonder why families throw their children into the water, but that is beside the point. What I can't get out of my head are your images. "Mothers cheer/as their little Phelpses go./ Darwin's underwater show/takes to the sky." I love how you use the reference to Michael Phelps.
I wonder though...what are the tubes? And is there a way you could talk about why people do this?
I feel like those two things would be an interesting addition to the piece.
Also, line five, where you say "the ones that swim swim," I think it might sound better if you put the second swim in its own line.

Reading Response Entry 1 (Week 5)

This is a response to the "West of Stupid" play by Cusi Cram. What Professor Davidson said to focus on was how the dialogue propels the story.
This aspect of the play is absolutely fascinating, because dialogue is what we have been focusing on in class and is the weakest part of most fiction. I know that I am terrible at writing dialogue, so I was reading ravenously, trying to find what I could steal.
I love how in the play Cram uses the character Jeff to keep the story propelled by asking his mother June questions. She just talks and talks and talks about anything on her mind, jumping from subject to subject avoiding the questions, but he keeps at her and ends up getting what he wants. This constant berating is seen in the part on page 90 where June keeps asking why her son is clenching his teeth. As readers, we know that there is something on his mind, but when he responds "Mrs. Franchetti," we know she is just a triggering subject, or excuse for what he really wants his mother to talk about...her fear of dying.
The way that Cram writes June's speech to dance around the question that her son is asking is amazing because the strength that her son was worried about her losing is seen in this stubbornness. I really want to make my dialogue hint at these character traits and feelings as well.

Peer Response Entry 1 (Week 5)

This is a response to David's Calisthenic Entry (http://dillidg1sjournal.blogspot.com/2012/02/calisthenics-wk-5.html)...
This is quite funny. I really enjoyed the second character especially when he said that ultrasound gel was like a giant hocked a loogie on someones stomach. This was written exactly as conversations happen in reality. The first character, who can't tell jokes, also made me laugh because that's the same with me...I can never really get the joke quite right and end up ruining it in the end.
However, I don't think that you need the "As if his response wasn't enough to let you know he wasn't listening" part. This seems a little vague and just doesn't quite fit with the rest of the piece. I think you could rewrite that sentence to be something more like "The pencil seesawing on his nose and eyes glazed behind my right shoulder showed that he really wasn't paying attention to what I was saying."

Junkyard Quote Entry 4 (Week 5)

"The ultrasound gel feels like a giant hocked a loogie on your stomach."
-Calisthenic entry by David (http://dillidg1sjournal.blogspot.com/2012/02/calisthenics-wk-5.html)

Free Entry 1 (Week 5)

My friend was telling me about her day a couple of days ago, and the one thing I thought of was Taco Tuesday. I asked if I could write about it and so here is her Taco Tuesday story...I'd love some comments and critiques.

 Taco Tuesday

Six AM, waking to the sound of mom
screeching about the piles of blue plastic dinner plates
and mix matched coffee cups left in the sink from yesterday.
Oops.

Eleven AM, first class of the day in the TLC
but the parking lot, bigger than the Falcons Stadium,
seems to be full. My grey Corolla scratched
trying to fit between two Jeep Hurricanes.
Fantastic.

One PM, finally easing my car out of the squished spot
and on the way to Ingles for my one to nine shift.
I have to work with HIM, my own personal stalker,
the kid who won’t take no for an answer and asks me
to his prom every time he sees my face.
Lovely.

Nine PM, counting the many green bills in my register
once, twice, three times? Why does the manager have to come
and stand over me? I stare bewildered as she checks my math
once, twice, three times. The misery and dark blue pity shadowing in her eyes
tells me all I need to know. My second write up
but this time, I’m an Alexander Hamilton over.
Kill me now.

Eleven PM, opening the door to the sound of my mother
“HONEY? WHICH IPOD IS YOURS?”
my stomach drops. I point. Eyes filled with remorse and deep brown pity,
she doesn’t have to say what I already know. The 5,000
Never Shout Never, LMFAO, Lil’Wayne, and Nicki Minaj songs
Gone.

Twelve AM, I retreat to my room with eyes filled to the lashes
with tears. I flop like a dead goldfish onto my bed and bow
to the black hole of the day. Sucking all the life from my being,
the pillows like quicksand. The salty compound drains down
my cheeks, and creates puddles of life around my fingers.
Submit.

Calisthenic Entry 1 (Week 5)

This is that dialogue calisthenic that we did in class. I would love to know if I am on the right track with this.

 " I have always found myself eating all of the apple. The seeds, the sticker, even the stem. But that is only if someone makes fun of me for eating the whole apple. Watching their face scrunch up in confusion makes me want to creep them out even more. Its all fiber actually. Nothing that you couldn't eat regularly." I push the last bits of the Red Delicious into my mouth and lick my thumb and forefinger satisfied.

"My mother always says that I don't get enough fiber. You know she wants me to start putting Benefiber into my water? It says on the bottle that there is no taste but they lie. It makes me want to puke." Four bleach blonde, well toned Tri-Deltas walk by our table and pause briefly by our table, staring slightly in disgust.

"The only part that you really shouldn't eat is the seeds. They have small amounts of cyanide, which if you grind up five of them, you can actually kill a small child. I learned that in Chemistry sophomore year."

"Oh my gosh! My Chemistry teacher at Colonial Hills never knew how to pronounce chemicals correctly. She would screech at us every time we tried to correct her." Leah slammed her hand on the table as if having an epiphany, even though I heard this story just yesterday.

Junkyard Quote Entry 3 (Week 5)

Tuesday we were talking before class about Valentine's Day and Drika said something about "The way to my heart is through Reese's Cups. Not even the good kind, just the ones from the vending machine." I replied "Yeah. All I'm worth on Valentine's Day is the 75 cent chocolate from a vending machine. That's nice."

Junkyard Quote Entry 2 (Week 5)

"He's only one nut away from being a nut."
-Kenny

Junkyard Quote Entry 1 (Week 5)

"Erin Ditto. Kicking ass and counting change correctly since 1994."
-Erin Ditto's facebook status

Valentines Day

The reason I took this photo was because of the cliched "I'm in love with you," they have "I'm in like with you."

Reading Response Entry 1 (Week 4)

This week's reading response, isn't a reading response, but a presentation response of the reading by David Madden.
First of all, I am so glad that I was able to attend the reading. He did an amazing job and just being able to listen to him brought a whole new meaning to the work. I really liked, however, how he spoke. Some writers read terribly. They might stutter, or skip over words, or use too many ums. But Madden didn't really do any of those. He did switch around sentences or words, but it wasn't distracting. What brought me into the reading, and kept my attention, was the different voices and inflections that he used. He read like people talk; he didn't stay in one tone, or read at one pace, he sped up if there was a need and slowed down if it sounded right. He used a different voice for Melissa, F, Carol, and Glenda and then his own voice for when he was the narrator. These slight changes kept me interested, just like the fact that he skips around in the first chapter to maintain interest and to avoid giving anything away. In the end, listening to Madden read helped me find ways to be a better reader myself.

Peer Response Entry 2 (Week 4)

This is in response to Daniel's Free Verse Entry 1 Week 4

"Spread out under the sycamore, feeling droplets
Samba on my chest,
Drenching the sheepskin covering me. I find
Clouds are playing with the sky. Geese playing
hide & seek in Geometric
formations, skirting above the tailwinds.
I'm shivering in the midst of the torrent we're both
facing, running towards a new land. One without
regeneration. Bathing the reincarnated wishes
of long lost.
The ground is mushy, licking
fibers holding me together.
Holding me arms' length away from drowning. Rising
from the war between Zeus and
Faunus, I sense the daydreamer
staring. I snatch his dream
deferred and sowed some for safeguarding.
Going back to which calls me."


First I want to start off by saying that I really like the specificity in the piece. Especially the "samba on my chest" and "rising from the war between Zeus and Faunus." The last one was so specific, I had to Google Faunus just to figure out who that was. Turns out he was the Roman god of the forest. I also think you picked great verbs: "samba," "bathing," "snatch," "sowed," "skirting"... but there were those two instances of the verb "played." I remember in class that Professor Davidson found it difficult to write with the verb "played." So maybe in the line "I find clouds are playing with the sky," you could change "are playing" to "flitting," because as I read that line, it seems as though they move quickly across the sky, kind of like when a hummingbird flits through the air. But I really like the next line: "Geese playing hide & seek in Geometric formations..." I think you could get by with the "played" here.
This is all in all, a really good piece.

Free Entry 1 (Week 4)

For my free entry this week, I wanted to try the litany we did in class again. Comments and suggestions are welcomed!

Let me start off by saying,
Thank you to my knee high socks in my ankle high boots,
and thank you to the microscopic scratch
on my glasses, that only I can seem to see.
To that one woman on Taco Tuesday, who has a full fledged panic attack in line,
and that pothead smoker who laughs
even when nothing is particularly funny,
thank you.
Thank you to those few share the road bikers who boost the economy
with pseudo-sponsored gear and overpriced bikes,
Finalmente, gracias a todas las personas
con muchos ninos, especialmente en los restaurantes.
All waitresses appreciate you.
From the depth of my soul, I thank you all.

Improv/Imitation Piece Entry 1 (Week 4)

So, Professor Davidson mentioned a piece by Frank O'Hara in class entitled "The Day Lady Died" while we were working on our litanies. Well, I really liked the first few lines:

"It is 12:20 in New York a Friday

three days after Bastille day, yes

it is 1959 and I go get a shoeshine

because I will get off the 4:19 in Easthampton   

at 7:15 and then go straight to dinner

and I don’t know the people who will feed me

I walk up the muggy street beginning to sun   

and have a hamburger and a malted and buy

an ugly NEW WORLD WRITING to see what the poets   

in Ghana are doing these days" 

and I wanted to take a stab at imitating them using life in Roswell, instead of New York City.

Its 3:40 in Roswell a Friday

the day of the rivalry game, yes

its Milton and Roswell, 2011 and we stampede into Taco Mac

because we get the 20% discount for students and are on time for 6:30 tailgating in the parking lot

and 7:00 kickoff, where up in the stands flour is thrown and no one pays attention to the game

only the drum line and no one cares about the score until the very end

I swim upstream against the angry mob of hormonal teens

and scour the stadium for my sister and her friend and buy

a overpriced Dasani water to support the PTA

in whatever unnecessary fundraiser they try to support these days.

Let me know what you think.

I loved the structure of his poem, but wanted to include the fundamentals we talked about in class.

Peer Response Entry 1 (Week 4)

This is a response to Brittany's Junkyard Quote 4 Week 4 and the Valentine's Day piece from last week that she started.
(Junkyard Quote)
"Writing is a exploration. You start from nothing and learn as you go." 
-E.L. Doctorow
(Valentine's Day piece from last week)
I hate Valentines Day. Mothers have Mother's day. Fathers have father's day. There is even a Grandparent's day and a Secretaries' day. Do you know what we single people get? Palm Sunday. Today in class someone, a student I suppose, asked if I had any plans for Valentines Day. Of course I don't, not unless Trivia Night at the Irish Pub off of Hwy 166 counts as "plans." But I do that every week. I should probably call Dr. Wolf back about setting up my next appointment. He will probably go on about eating carrots. I don't think my eye sight is that bad. After all, I was able to see her.

I wanted to combine the two entries because, for me, they went hand in hand. I really liked the quote because it touches on the idea that we have been discussing in class, how great writers only create the characters and then let them run their course and their fate by themselves. And, in this piece specifically, you are starting to show this. It starts with a topic, Valentine's Day, but I can feel that there is something more to this character, something maybe with previous Valentine's Days, or her eyes, that will come out. But this is a great start and I cannot wait to see what direction this character takes you.

Junkyard Quote Entry 4 (Week 4)

"Committing suicide. Hamster-style. "
-me telling the story of how my hamster died

Junkyard Quote Entry 3 (Week 4)

"The peril of waiting to shit..."
-Morgan's Calisthenic

"Dangling from a tree shaped diffuser hanging on a rear-view mirror of a Moscow taxi"
-Emperor of Scent

Junkyard Quote Entry 2 (Week 4)

"You can sleep through tornados and firedrills...you don't throw anything away. You have a filing cabinet with nothing in it."
-My father talking about quirky things about me

"Real friends bring [your] dickyness to the surface."
-Me talking to Leah about if she was being a "dick" then I would have to get mad at her.

Calisthenics Entry 1 (Week 4)

Today in class we were discussing Tone and had a couple of sentences with groups of words that were terrible tone words. Our assignment was to take the sentences and create better tone. BUT- we had to use one of the bad tone words.
The sentence that I chose that had bad tone was: "She yearned for escape, for oblivion, for release from her despair."
What I changed it to was: "Sarah fidgeted in her blue plastic chair, eagerly watching the second hand tick by at the pace of molasses, itching to crawl back into the solitude of her polka-dot bed and succumb to the reruns of Jersey Shore, the only safe haven in the black hole of a world."
My bad tone word was safe.

Or another one is: "Her deadly glare tore open my helpless spirit, and I wept in agony."
I changed it to: "The teenage embodiments of angry demons slouched in their seats throwing shards of glass with their eyes."
My bad tone word was angry demons.

Junkyard Quote Entry 1 (Week 4)

"Wine is like my Tylenol. Only one glass a day calms me down just fine."
-my friend Mallory's mother


"At one moment you are mean and then at another moment you are nice...You are like a Sour Patch Kid. -Lennox complaining about me being "bipolar"

Whaat?

So I laughed at this because who says commode anymore? Plus they spelled it wrong.

Reading Response Entry 1 (Week 3)

I really liked the piece "My Father's Love Letters." What I liked most was Komunyakaa's ability to break the lines in ways that had a subliminal message to them. Especially the line "He would beg/Promising to never beat her/ Again." The way in which he broke the lines made a message all on their own. I want to do that as a writer- I want to create little messages in the piece that are not just with the words and the what they say. This also comes with the words that Komunyakaa picks: "We sat in the quiet brutality/Of voltage meters & pipe threaders." What? Those are not the typical things that you would think of using, but in class we talked about how they fit better because they are foreign to the speaker (and the reader), much like this relationship between the speaker and the father. This is also the case with "The gleam of a five-pound wedge/On the concrete floor/Pulled a sunset/Through the doorway of his toolshed." This alludes to the fact that the speaker is wedged between his father and his mother writing these love letters, trying to pull light back into the darkened relationship. I love these allusions and subliminal messages. This is the kind of writing I want to produce.

Peer Response Entry 2 (Week 3)

This is a response to Beverly's Improv: The Virgin Inquisition (link: http://beverlysmithblogspotcom.blogspot.com/2012/02/improv-my-fathers-love-letters.html)

First of all: I LOVE THE TITLE. It made me immediately say "huh? I need to read this." And then as I began to read I became entranced by your images. Especially the one "Our squirming and sinking deeper into our chairs was almost imperceptible as we prayed for an act of Nature, like a tornado or earthquake,to put an end to this awkward embarrassment and total violation of our privacy" and "Her eyes could bore a hole in your psyche that made you feel guilty for even being born with a vagina." They both show the whole idea of being uncomfortable by your mother giving "the talk" rather than just saying: it was so awkward when my mother sat us down and gave us the talk.
I also really love the inner thoughts that you throw in...I know Professor Davidson says to use those sparingly, but I think in this case they give real insight to the character and how she interacts with her mother.

This is fantastic scene. Nice job.

Free Entry 1 (Week 3)

For my free entry this week, I wanted to go back to the day when Professor Davidson asked us about what made us us. He specifically told me to write about swimming. After trying to come up with a way to write about it, this is what I came up with (its a little long, so I apologize in advance.):

The Fish

“Event 4,
Heat 1.”
The loudspeaker blares
with the words of my turn.
The bubbles,
originally in the pool,
have now risen
from the base of my belly
to the tip of my esophagus.
Drowning out the ability
to move forward.

Step up.
The cement block wobbles
under the fear in my feet.
I’m on the side of a pirate ship
walking the plank
to the calm sea below.
Quiet noise blares in my ears.
Glancing across the seven lanes
I see my mother
nervous grinning plastered on her face.

Focus.
Searching the water
I find the perfect place
to land my ship.
Not too close,
not too far.
Unclench your toes.
Medley starts
first swimmer, second,
Brooke, third, comes skating across the pool
the gap between me and her closing.


Now.
My turn.
Her fingers grace the edge,
I’m off like a firecracker.
Leaping into the air,
poised with the precision
of a ballerina.
Gliding under the water
with the streamline of a Kingfisher.
My feet greet like old friends
before I can think.

Kick.
Feet together.
Up
Down
Up
Cutting through the water
my torso stretching,
the racing suit tearing
slightly with the pressure.
Shoulders greeting the air above
with the butterfly that becomes my arms.
Fingertips graze the lane-lines
reminding me to stay in the lane.
I notice nothing but the touch-pad,
the black X underwater
on the wall 25 meters away.
Latex swim-cap digging at my ears,
goggles fogging with the heat of
the water oozing through the cracks near the eyes.

Faster.
Nothing fazes the Jesus lizard
skimming the chlorine saturated water.
It is only when I smack into the wall
and break the surface-
greeted by the cheers
of teammates,
coaches,
parents,
friends-
that I realize we won
and I forgot to breathe.

Peer Response Entry 1 (Week 1)

This is a response to Drika's Junkyard Quote 4:"If toast always lands butter-side down, and cats always land on their feet, what happens if you strap toast on the back of a cat and drop it?"
-Steven Wright-

I read this the first time and could not help but laugh at the image of a cat with a piece of toast strapped to its back and then falling. I really do wonder which falling piece would have more pull...I have to think though that the cat, being heavier, would have to be the one that would land upright, rather than the toast landing upside down.
This would make a great start to a short story about someone who thinks about this quote and then sets out testing this theory...It could be someone's science fair or some sort of project!

Improv/ Imitation Entry 1 (Week 3)

For my imitation piece, I wanted to take the idea that Professor Davidson told us to write about (a time when your parent or a family member embarrassed you) and imitate Komunyakaa's piece "My Father's Love Letters." But specifically, I focused on the non metrical idea and then the enjambment and line breaks. I also wanted to use showing not telling, specificity and think small. I feel like its missing something, so if anyone would care to help....Thanks!


My Mother’s Birthday Present

On Wednesday she waited for me to come home
and asked about my day,
laughing suspiciously at the story
I told of my friend
who begged me to read
his paper but changed his mind.
She laughed
even though it wasn’t funny
and that was that. In the back
of my mind,
something irked.
Thursday I walked the hallway,
every square inch swarmed
with feet and flailing
arms. The balloons
bigger than Pluto,
the bags of Subway and treats,
exploded through the doors.
Looking up with sheer anguish
and guilt spread across her face,
I could only imagine
the look on mine.
“Mom?!
What are you doing here?”
The only words I could choke
out as she begins to sing
“Happy Birthday,”
off key and nervous,
in the middle of the zoo of a high school.
Running off, hiding in the solitude of the hallway,
sweating the embarrassment, taking it out on the locker door,
I began to regret.
Searching for her, I knew,
that she only wanted to surprise her oldest daughter
on her 16th birthday,
redeemed by that unending,
unembarrassed love.

Junkyard Quote Entry 4 (Week 3)

"Your farts are like an atomic bomb. Mine are just like pfft. Its because of your heritage."
"So just because I'm Mexican I have bad farts."
"Yeah. Its because of what you eat."
-a conversation between my friends Mallory and Leah

Junkyard Quote Entry 3 (Week 3)

"You just have talent oozing out of your face"
-a woman at my friend Leah's church who said this after Leah played the flute for their service.

"My mom didn't have me, she bought me…therefore I was more wanted."
-a girl in my psychology class talking about being adopted