Don't Look Too Closely, I'm Just Acting

So I've kind of sucked it up on my goals this past month. I'm still reading the book I started reading over winter break. I clearly haven't been writing, our finances are no much more settled than earlier, we have not taken a trip (thought that is a summer goal in my defense), and the only trumpet playing I've really done was at University basketball games (which isn't pretty and doesn't count). BUT, I have crossed the 20 pound mark on my weight lost quest (that goal actually began in October, so I get to count from there), and I have dreamt a good deal about what I want in a house, though sadly we can afford none of it.

Things look fairly pathetic; however, in all my insane prep work for school, I did come across some poems I wrote a few years back the last time I taught the poetry course I'm teaching right now. They both come from in-class exercises I used to do with the students, but I don't remember the exact details. The first one (which I don't really like) had something to do with a newspaper article about uncovering a slave cemetery in New York City. It made me think of "For the Union Dead" by Robert Lowell (which you'll have to read on your own time), and is a pretty poor knock off. The second, which I think is half way decent, was probably based off a homonym exercise since it involves 'pairing' and 'paring.' (Side note: I am mildly obsessed with closely related words that mean opposing things. For example, 'cleave' is like the best verb in the entire world since it can mean both "hold on to" and "force apart".)

I'm posting them both here to: a) give the impression that I've actually been writing, b) fulfill my own constant desire to obsess over poems I've already written rather than write new ones, and c) to see if anyone even still reads this blog.

Cheers!

Rebury the Dead

The cityscape will gain a few
more players soon. Bulldozers have
scratched in the street
all morning, their long arms
clawing through urban farmland
harvesting lamp poles, tilling stone. And
where do we replace the bones beneath our street
so long ago left to be awoken
this way? Who will sing their songs
under the asphalt? Who will hear their stories
pound our foot soles? Not so much

has changed

in a hundred years, in fifty years, in
four days. A ditch is still
a ditch. How many more
years until we find ourselves
unearthed in the role of progress
a lot awarded to the highest bidder.

All around the tiny burial ground
new finless fish slide by the pavement
covered with grease.


Paring

You phoned last week
to tell me about the dinner
you had six months ago. Next year
I will return your
call and we will continue down,
paring our discourse
until all that remains is the hum
and static on the line
between our gapped breaths
and unmentioned loves. It is amazing how
I haven’t seen you in years but felt
the brush of your skin (we
never touched
enough) on my face. Such absence –
two stalks set
in such a difficult pairing.