Zoe Brigley Thompson

I attended the Zoe Brigley Thompson reading and I hope that made be a better human being as promised. Joking aside, I really enjoyed listening to this Celtic tradition poet whose poems were different from anything I had ever read before. I had never heard of Mrs. Thompson going into the night, but I was pleasantly surprised with her poems as well as her explanation behind the poems. The range of her poems was very wide, with some concerning the Welsh outside of my own understanding, but I still liked the images and ideas that she presented. She spent a lot of time talking about a painter that she was inspired from as well as her time in the Bronte compound. I couldn't help but compare this artist two the fiction and non-fiction readings I had gone to this year. I definitely felt like I was able to gain the most from this reading to help me in my work. Mrs. Thompson really cared about her work, and her heritage, in a way that was obvious to all who attended and it really helped make the night enjoyable. I didn't expected I would have enjoyed this reading as much as I did, and I'm thankful I gave Zoe and her work a chance.

Tick Tock

Right after my mum died I could no longer see people as individuals, but rather as timers about to run out. Grandma: age-75, weight-145 pounds, height-5 feet, type II diabetes, diverticulitis, lives alone. Two years max, and even that felt too generous. Next would be my great Aunts Mary Jane and Lisa. I don’t have any statistics on them but I can only assume they have about five years left until they finished circling the drain. I set these timers up for everyone I cared about in order to prepare myself for what I knew to be the inevitable. The thing is, it’s been 10 years and none of them died yet. Not that I’m disappointed, but when you spend that long preparing yourself for something, it is disheartening.
The classroom is full of eager students armed with laptops,voice recorders,3-ring binders, 5-subject notebooks and enough pens to build a fort. I sit in the back of the auditorium with a blank piece of college ruled paper covering my desk. Anytime I’m bored in class and I’ve already enjoyed a quick nap I like to play a game where I figure out what I’d do if someone ran into the room with a gun. Obviously I depends on what entrance they take but from where I’m seated I’m equally screwed either way. I never sit in the front since a gunman is most likely to run to center stage to demand attention. Never sit next between two fat people. One fat person makes a great possible shield but two just keep you in place like thumbtacks on a board. Well, next class I’ll pick a better seat but today I’m just going to sit back and get a little break from receptor-mediated endocytosis and head back to my dreams of being a real doctor as my head is pulled down onto my plain white shirt.

*****

My ears are ringing now and it’s just the worst feeling. I hate alarm clocks for that exact reason. Silent, or vibrating alarm clocks, are the way of the future and I’m already on board. I look around awkwardly push someone’s head off my shoulder. Jesus, if you’re going to sleep in class atleast do it right. As soon as pull my hand back I immediately notice that it’s covered in blood. I jump up and yell out as 100 students and one angry looking woman stare right at me.

“Sit the fuck down. You worthless piece of shit,” said the woman brandishing a .22 handgun. I tried and sit down a good amount of blood has pooled on my chair and I only own one pair of jeans. I look in awe at the same faces looking back at me and reach the uncomfortable conclusion that I feel nothing. Suicide by cop is when someone who is suicidal provokes a police officer into shooting them. The term suicide by maniac woman with a gun is not a term that will fit on my obituary. All the while I’m amusing myself and barely can hear the words being fired out of this deranged woman’s mouth.
“Do you need someone to talk to? I yell from the back of classroom.
“Are you trying to be funny? I said fucking no one talks,” the woman replied.
I pulled my phone out from my pocket and quickly checked my reflection off the screen. I had about a minute left. I slowly rose up and started to feel the beginning of something real. I bolted for the back door and before I come press in the medal handle I felt the worst pain. It was hard to describe, but it was pretty disheartening.

Satisfied Partying

The more I do this, the more I feel like the complete idiot that I am. I look over to bodies scattered around the room like a thrown pack of cards and I can’t help but feel like I’m missing something. Last night was New Year’s Eve and I don’t remember much more than that. I do remember taking shots with friends of friends, listening to girls complain about how their boyfriend is really a great guy but he just needs time, and throwing up in a toilet. I look around the apartment and can’t find a cup that isn’t filled with alcohol from last night, so I cup my hands together and guide the water into my dry mouth. I am almost completely full when Marcos, my best friend since 8^th grade, taps me on the back.

“Bro, you know we have cups right? I always keep extra in the top cabinet.”

I give him a look that says thanks and watch as he makes his way over to the same toilet I threw up in last night. I’ve been coming here for parties the past few months and I still don’t know anyone else’s name except Marcos. I tried hanging out with some people I had meet at his Halloween party a few weeks ago but things didn’t work out. For how desperate I am to connect with someone else, it’s amazing how picky I am. After only 10 minutes at the coffee shop with two rather chatty girls, I excused myself out and went back to apartment to spend another night watching re-runs. My apartment looks terrible right now: poor lighting, no posters, and no family pictures. I’m working on fixing the problem but I’ve been busy lately. I ordered some posters of my favorite shows and I even have some new lights coming in.

Marcos heads back over into the kitchen and he has this great smile and just keeps laughing and laughing about last night. I nod at random and laugh along as I watch those behind him raise from the floor as if they were zombies. I can’t really put into words my hate from everyone in the room, but it fills me up and makes me feel full. I grab my jacket and start heading out towards the door and Marcos starts making coffee for all his fans.

“Same time next week?” he says with that same Marcos smile.

“I wouldn’t miss it.”

All at Once

As I make my way over to the renovated hearse that passes as the family car, I can’t help but assume the worst. I’m late and I’m not as prepared as I told myself I would be. Every night for the past two weeks I wrote out everything I would need to do to prepare myself but people can surprise you, yourself included. I jump into my car and as I turn the key in the ignition my neon ukulele keychain sways to the rushed beat of my heart. For a split second after, I still live in a time where the worst hasn’t yet come to fruition.

As the car speaker (I blew the driver’s side speaker out 2 years ago after a particularly long night) started to pump out the words of George Carlin I couldn’t help but force my fist into the steering wheel. Seeing as the horn was also broken, the resulting thud could hardly block out Carlin’s voice.

“I’m behind the 8-ball, ahead of the curve, riding the wave, dodging the bullet and pushing the envelope…”

As much as I appreciate anyone mocking euphemisms tonight was not the night for that. I’m already halfway down the street as I throw the Carlin CD out the window and begin searching for my Space Jam CD to get me prepared for tonight’s action. I really thought Thom would have been the one to call me, but things would still be okay with Rosanna being the caller. I had about 15 minutes till I got to the vacant football field next to Thom’s house but I was perfectly on time. Space Jam was always my favorite movie of all time time. I think for most people they liked it because of Michael Jordan dunking to R.Kelly songs or because of Bugs Bunny. But I, I liked how the little Martian guys were able to take away power for those we didn’t appreciate it, just like that. I also loved Bill Murrary.

By now I was almost at the field and I was ready to help out my friends in their time of need. As I sprinted across the field to the endzone were Thom and Rosanna were seated, I couldn’t help but imagine how good of a scene this would have made in a movie. I sat down next to Thom as he held hands with Rosanna.

“Took you long enough. I’m only going to say this to you once and then we are moving on and never going back,” Thom said all awhile I stared at myself in the reflection of his eyes. I really wish I would start keeping a comb in the car.

I nodded in agreement as Thom started to tell me all the dreadful events that had occurred to him and Rosanna that day. I did my best to act surprised, I had been practicing every year in case someone threw me a surprise birthday party. As Thom finished I looked over to him and looked into his eyes and past my reflection. I cleared my throat and delivered my line.

“I don’t know what to believe anymore, this couldn’t happen to two nicer people.” I stayed in character until the complete hollowness of the words was too much to bear and slowly felt a smile meet my face.

Rocky Stone

A Stone

It feels like the worn skin of my grandmother’s hands
smells like a freshly cleaned chalkboard eraser.
with the look like a penny sliced right down its middle.
the surface has so many small indentations that the rock almost appears porous like a sponge.
it tastes like a broken popsicle stick.

forgotten and trampled over many times that its shape has been morphed like a rusty coke can
laying next to hundreds of other stones that at first appear exactly the same
and the very aspects that make it unique are in reaction to outside forces
how can it claim to be an individual when it gives nothing new
I restrict this stone to my lifeless wooden desk.
To remember that we are all carbon copies at first glance

Dexter Morgan

Dexter

Tonight’s the night
Where everything will finally be put back in place.
In these last moments, everything is finally right

You lie there as still as this site,
There is no more, I won the chase.
Tonight’s the night

When they catch me, I wonder what they will write.
“How could he do it? What a disgrace!”
In these last moments, everything is finally right

The feeling is now gone, no more delight.
You give me nothing now, you will soon have no trace.
Tonight’s the night

What went wrong? I’m almost contrite.
That temporary reprieve was one of the few breaks in the race.
In these last moments, everything is finally right

I clean up the mess you made and wait for what the night may invite.
You are now one of many, a blank face to erase.
Tonight was the night.
And in those last few moments, I saw my soul ignite.

I choose the villanelle for my formal poem because I enjoy the idea of repetition in poems and how they can affect the reader after they are finally done. The ending change of both refrains also allowed for me to show some sort of internal change from the image I tried to portray in the poem and I really enjoyed that. My poem is based off of the TV show Dexter and I thought this type of juxtaposition between the story of a serial killer and this strict, formalistic poem would be unique. I did not vary much from the rules of the poem just because I felt that if I did too much it would be so derivative of the structural meaning and I wanted some kind of practice at adhering to rules of poetry in preparation for the one formalistic poem we have the write for the next project. Overall, I really enjoyed writing about such a structured process, that of killing for Dexter, in a poem that also has a “code”. I didn’t really mention killing or how he kills openly because I felt that it would take away from the poem, as the show does the same with its lack of graphic content for being a show about a serial killer. I really enjoyed writing a villanelle and I plan on using one for my next project now.