Response to Megan Fogg's Junkyard Week One

Link to original post.

My response: 

Megan, I keep coming back to this post out of all your others partially because of the repetition you have in the second stanza and partially because of the line “as if I hadn’t stabbed a nurse with her rhinestoned pen.” The line offers a distinct bit of tension that I think would have been missing without the word "rhinestoned." She, besides the narrator, is the most intriguing character and I would love to see her developed or brought back in again. The rhinestone pen gives her a more humanizing feel that, again, we wouldn't have gotten without that little detail so compliments to you on that! And the repetition, like I said before, utilizes itself without being overbearing or too much. I like the fact that you broke up the monotony of the “as if i hadn’t" clipped lines with the longer lines. One other suggestion might be to take a look at the line breaks towards the end of the piece, specifically the two word line “to surrender.” Two word lines are always kind of iffy for me, as they never seem to pack the right amount of punch. I think that at this point in the game, you can combine the two last lines together to make one line. But the word embrace seems to be one of those words that you might expect in poetry…so maybe think of something more unexpected like “to surrender to a sudden tomorrow” or “to surrender, to forgive sudden respite,” or something like that. It offers something surprising in such a traumatic situation. I do like the distinct coolness of the language, like we discussed in class. It allows the emotion to not overtake the piece, but to simmer just under the surface, thereby making it interesting and tense. Hat's off to you, girl!

Original Post 1 Week one

This comes from "THERE WAS EARTH INSIDE THEM, and they dug"--Paul Celan. I'm particularly interested in the repetition of the certain words and phrases.


There was silicone inside her, and she cried.

She cried and she cried, and my day went by
and I cursed my father, and some god,
who, so I heard, watched all this happen,
who, so I heard, did not impede.

She cried and did nothing else;
she did not eat, cooked nothing from scratch,
let my sister and me live off the courtesy of neighbors.
She cried.

Then, suddenly, a quiet undercurrent of nothing,
and there came a dry heave of winds, and nothing fell.
I cried, you cried, and all the birds cried too.

A one, a none, a no one, a you:
Where did you go when no one could go?
Did you cry when she cried?
yet on your shoulder no one cries.

Junkyard 4 week one

An oak tree, not quite full grown but not still a sapling, toppled over the night before, landing on an elderly woman's house. Across the street, a man with a tool shed in his front lawn plucks through a series of broken lawn chairs and umbrellas, not quite sure what he's looking for. Three men climb on the roof with the tree, lugging a couple of chain saws and down the street, a man with a glowing orange and yellow vest blocks the street, piles branches along the curbs for the garbage men. Someone sits on a log, opens a bottle of water and looks around, rubs the back of a work glove on their cheek, nods at another. The man across the street carries a welcome mat across his lawn, squints in the sun and waves to no one in particular. 

Junkyard 3 week one

In Cutbank, Montana, there remains one working bar with the name "Spud's" written on the side, two grocery stores with boarded windows, and a post office. As my grandmother creeps over the railroad tracks, next to the field of abandoned oil rigs where my grandfather worked when my father was still sledding down Dead Man's Hill with his sister tied to the back, I notice a child, no older than eight, chasing a mangled dog around the corner. "I had no idea people still lived in this God-forsaken town," someone in our car says. Each house, peeling from weather and age, has sunk to shack-dom, welcoming the meth addicted transients of the closest town, still fifty miles away. My father set the prairie up the hill on fire, next to the yellow and green dog house that some kind of bird comes half flying, half running out of. Out of a cracked window peers two faces, wrinkled and pale. From my seat, I watch the woman's already faded blue eyes dim even more.  

Junkyard 2 week one

In a park near Dallas, there's a boy no older than eight wearing a neon green under armour shirt with a pair of orange shorts standing behind what could only be his brother, in a blue nike shirt and a pair of red shorts, holding a football as big as his head. Two Labradors barrel across the street while an older woman runs behind, trying to catch them, hollering their names as though they would listen. Two younger boys climb on a nearby swing-set, pushing and shoving to reach the top. I watch as one tumbles down the slide backward, landing on the wood chips wrong, clutching a sob for the split second it takes for the other boy to fall down the slide right after him, crashing just as hard. It takes the second descent to make the first laugh instead of cry and a nearby woman, their mother, breathes and instantaneous sigh of what I make to be relief. Behind me, the dogs have made their way around to the back of the park, barking incessantly until the gate opens and they can tear up some child's leftover jacket on the basketball court. 

Junkyard 1 week one

At the base of the alley outside my house, there's a spray-painted picture of the word happiness in white and a blue box around it, filled in. Above the word happiness, a third grade image of a house: the box with a triangle perched on top. Underneath the whole thing, a quote: "if you want something in life, reach out and grab it." Three dots underneath, right justification. Turning around, cars line the street, parked and sitting pretty like the Pomeranian yapping just inside the window of the 60-somethings who are watching this dog while their daughter prances around Europe with her boyfriend. A Jeep Grand Cherokee still spotted with melted skittles, the revenge of an ex-lover, cruises slowly past me, a hat tipped to acknowledge me. A pigeon squawks somewhere behind me.

Memory week one

In third grade, I received my first invitation to a boy-girl birthday party. My mother only let me attend because the birthday boy, Matt, didn't have a mother and he sent me chocolates on valentines day. She drove me out to this parking lot in middle-of-nowhere Illinois where sixteen blow-up "attractions," if you will, sat. I can't tell you where we started or who all attended, but about halfway through the party, Matt, our friend Scott, and I found ourselves at the top of a 40 foot tall Titanic themed slide. As we climbed up to the top, Scott peered over the edge, hopping up and down on his step, making the whole thing shake. I climbed the lane next to him, watching the feet of Matt, who climbing directly in front of me. Having a desperate fear of heights, no way on God's green earth was I looking down. Two teenagers dressed in red and yellow jumpsuits greeted us with "sit with your butt firmly on the slide and keep your feet out in front of you." Matt proceeded down the slide, peering over the ship's railing, watching his descent. I like to imagine that he envisioned himself with the rest of the crew and passengers of the actual Titanic and that's why he leaned too far over the side. I never saw him hit the ground, I never heard him scream. As I propelled myself towards the base of the ship, his body seemed to melt into the grass, like he gave up. Scott hollered at me to slow down as I ran, maneuvering through the lot to where Matt's dad parked the beat-up Yukon, frantically explaining, feeling a twinge of superiority since I knew what happened to his son first. Watching the EMT load Matt into the back, lights flashing way to brightly for the middle of the day, I remember shivering, standing too far away to matter, and a man in a jeep rubbernecking.