Junkyard 3 Week 3

My tank top, fading slightly in the middle, rubbed incorrectly at the waist. Readjusting for the umpteenth time, the boy to the left of me in the library glares, as though I am making too much noise. It's the first floor, so loud is heavenly. My bracelet rakes against the computer, making a slightly more appealing nails on a chalkboard sound. Two more people, sitting at the computers watching porn, turn away from the screen to whisper. A kid with a ninja turtles backpack walks by, slurping on some green frappuccino.

Junkyard 2 Week 3

In St. Charles, about an hour from Chicago, there's a cement tunnel under a highway,
where boys wrote hate notes to each other and girls scribbled names of the people they'd do
if their parents didn't always have the kitchen lights on.
This tunnel, with the perpetual river down the middle, even in hair frying July,
connected my town to Wasco.
Here, a post office, a corner store specializing in dime candy, and a gas station
with two pumps, but only one that worked.
Here, a woman who looked like my grandmother walked up and down the street,
smiling at everyone with that toothy grin, almost cliche. I saw forever from that corner.

Junkyard 1 Week 3

At the Fall Out Boy concert on Sunday, a girl in jeans tighter than mine started crying when the lights dimmed. She tugged at her ripped tank-top, adjusted her mascara and tattoo-choker no one's seen since the 90s, and began FaceTimeing her friend. I watched the phone, the little screen showing Fall Out Boy, the larger, some girl cross-legged on her bed, hand over mouth. The woman between this girl and myself, jumps up and down as the band begins "Sugar We're Going Down." She clasps the arm of the girl, who joins her, having lost the FaceTime connection at this point. She bends to adjust the red and black flannel around her waist and I notice the gel-pen tattoos that covered her arms.

Memory 1 Week 3

**I apologize in advance for any discomfort or TMI that this post might offer**

I memorized the pattern of our bathroom tile, tracing the caulk over and over again, lying on my right side, curled around the toilet. I clenched my tear ducts tighter than my ass cheeks, holding all liquids in for the 20 minutes my doctor scribbled onto the suppository box.
My mother sat on the lip of the tub, rubbing my leg, crying for me.

Three weeks earlier, my doctor ordered an all liquid diet, saying that my colon was clogged and the water and Welches white grape juice would "flush me out." I was in third grade that year and hadn't taken a shit in a month and a half.

For a two weeks,  I drank nothing but a milky liquid that tasted like chalk and left residue on my lips and gums, which I then washed down with watered white grape juice. Lunch, even at school, consisted of apple sauce and juice, and threatened multiple bathroom runs.
I remember a substitute teacher, having zero bedside manner, mentioning that "should I have to go to the bathroom, feel free to just leave," as she turned out the lights for an in-class video. As the class turned to stare at me, some kid in the back snickered and another threw a crumpled paper at me, and I lowered my face to the desk.

I returned to the doctor after my three week juice cleanse, only to have another milky liquid shoved through a hose in my rectum. It was something that would allow my colon to be shown on this little screen, and the hose had some camera attached at the end, causing my mother much pleasure as she watched the doctor go through my body.

I crushed her hand, focusing only on the small drips of nasty oozing incorrectly from me.
"Look Tay. How cool is that?" my mother shrieked in awe as the doctor laughed. I smiled half-heartedly, a stray tear dribbled down my cheek but I craned my neck, hoping the inside of me would take my mind off of the knifing going on at the opposite end of me, something jabbing, trying to mimic the alien emerging from the belly of that woman in the movie I watched the night before.

Original Post 1 Week 2

This is based on Anna Swir's "White Wedding Slippers." What struck me most about this piece: the subject matter. It's so easy to write about the most expected images of the Nazis, but instead, she focuses on the minute detail of the slippers her mother wore to go get bread. If that's not combating expectation and heavy emotion...

Blue Hospital Socks

One night
my mother drove seven hours in the rain
and came home with this pair of wooly,
fraying, blue hospital grade socks.
She peeled off hers and put these on,
shaking fingers.

Early in the morning
I'd hear her crying, see her touching
her feet, the socks.
They smelled like an old man
and latex.
She wore them a year
but never explained.

They were handed to her by a nurse in Florida,
the only possession of my grandfather.

Response to Wilson Chancey's Junkyard 3 Week 2

This is a response to Wilson Chancey's post Junkyard 3 Week 2.

Here is what I wrote:
Wilson,
Even though I don't know what’s happening in the narrative, I thoroughly enjoy the images you provide us, specifically “half-green strawberries,” “taste like melon shell, dipped in lime,” “dark pulp of an imperfect berry,” because they seem surprising in by themselves or in context with the rest of the line. The next step would be to work on the actual narrative, making them both work together to be surprising and make some kind of sense.
Although I like the line “gulp of discontent,” I’m not sure how I feel about that being so close to “disconcerted with me also.” Maybe it’s the word disconcerted, which is just so latinate, but I don’t think that line is as strong as the first. The first line seems more surprising, like the images. The other thing to think about—line breaks and end punctuation. Punctuation becomes highly important in poetry because it reflects some sort of control over syntax. It’s one of the things I struggle with most in writing. But in this piece, I think that the first line needs some sort of punctuation: a period seems most likely unless you decide to move “dipped in lime” up to the second line, then you could get away with a comma. The “dipped in lime” line seems a little out of place where it is right now, because I’m not sure why it’s important enough to merit it’s own line. It seems purely a description of the strawberries or the melon shell. Just some things to think about for the next draft or whatever you decide to do with this.

Response to Isaiah Hinsley's Junkyard 3 Week 2

This is a response to Isaiah Hinsley's post Image Junkyard 3 Week 2.

What I wrote:
Isaiah,
As I’m reading your junkyard posts, I find myself both intrigued in your subjects and wishing that you would allow yourself to take a couple more minutes and lines to really expand upon specific sensory details. For instance, take the line: “Every time I hear a trumpet I just get in a good mood” can turn into something so much more: Every time I hear a trumpet, my face morphs as though (and you insert something that makes people happy that is surprising.) In this way, you’re not telling the reader how you feel, but more showing them. I love the line “The trumpet is like a good joke,” because it opens a lot of doors for the piece, but following with “it’s going to make you smile” seems expected. I’d love to see a little pushing of the limits as to what makes the trumpet a good joke. Is there a punch line to a trumpet? Is there a science behind a good joke? Could there be a science behind a good joke? Allow yourself to take some risks, especially on something as cool as a trumpet as a joke because I have never heard that before, but I want to know more.