ENGL 5520 Poetry Workshop
Spring 2022, This class focused on analyzing and workshopping poetry, of our own and of those around us. I fell into a rhythm of identifying pieces of poetry that stood out, and I learned how seemingly insignificant details can completely change a piece. I tuned into the surrealism and storytelling that was hiding deep in all of my other poetry. I just had to find it and free it.
The Spider
Up in the dusty corner
Of my poorly painted bedroom wall,
A spider hard at work, ignores me
In its hurry to create a web
Of gray silk, warm and sticky
Where it plans to live off of
The bugs that the wind will blow in.
Day after day in its delusion,
It soaks up the sun that is my LED lamp
And moves in the wind that is my A/C.
It sits, starving, waiting for the world
To grant it a fly or two.
I watch as it crochets mandalas
Into its delicate strings, desperate
To live in the impossible desolation.
But hunger is sure to overcome the little
Spider, defeated in his web of fractals
Who, in one last act of defiance, tears
Apart his quiet corner of my lifeless room
Leaving a stringy mess of a web.
Night comes and the spider embraces
The cold. I wake in the chilly a.m. hours
Remembering nothing of my wild dreams.
I look to the spider, wondering if it was
Dead, its legs curled in like a final hug,
But instead, I find the perfect replica of
A dreamcatcher.
Thick braids of spider silk sail
Through the air. What was once ruins was now
Reborn as a second chance. The spider’s salvation,
An accidental mess made into feathers. I search the
Stunning resurrection, and at the center
I see the spider, stronger than ever. It is alive,
Tearing apart at the dreams that it caught
In the circle of its web. He liquefies and consumes
My nightmares and before I turn back
To my dreamless sleep, I see what looks like
Victory gleaming in all eight of his eyes.
Fighting
There is no place
More lonely than a hospital
Full of people
Dying. Where silence is
Only filled by one choir
Loud and slow, of families
Crying. Where nurses fall
On to knees, never enough
Hours in a day, but they are there
Trying. Impossible to hold onto hope
In those halls. Capacity reached,
There is no more room for those
Arriving. But please, do not give up
On the masses, those struggling most
I know that they are still in there
Fighting.
Surreal Sestina
Nestling in the soft, thick shreds
of yesterday’s obituary papers and old string,
the mice, cozy and fat in the old woman’s dining room,
open their long awaited celebratory wine.
They twirl their paws to swirl the spirit,
Each glass containing a horrible storm, destined to arise.
The woman arises.
Her yawn like a tsunami siren, shreds
through the once quiet night, frightening the spirits
of the mice. They quickly spit out the strings
of her doilies, adjust the ransacked cabinet of wine,
and critter back into the night, out of the room.
They find her mildew-riddled basement; it has no room
for all one hundred mice. Their yearning arises
as they long for the flavor of aged wine,
and mourn their home, their paradise of shredded
history. Their bindles now only carry paper, coffee, and string.
But they can’t stay. The basement is full of spirits.
So they trek across the valley, with low spirits
and heavy heads. But each residency refuses room
for the hundred mice. As the weather worsens, the strings
of their near-empty bindles thin out. The horrible storm arises.
Without a home, cats will come and rip them to shreds.
The little mice, stunned by the unforgiving wind, begin to whine.
As they freeze out on the street, they dream of warming wine
but in their sleep comes to them a quiet, shifting spirit.
I know a place, the spirit says, much better than your paper shreds,
A building full of wine, of food, and plenty of mouse-sized room.
And so they followed the ghostly rat, the sun behind them rising.
A kitchen for the finest chefs, no other mice, no dirt, paper or string.
Incredible, but what’s the catch? He chuckles and says, no strings
attached. They feast like kings and drink the glorious wine.
They clink their glasses, and see no signs of danger arising.
They want to thank their savior with a toast, but the spirit
is long gone. They sit alone, stuffed sick in the quiet room.
Then one mouse after the next, they drop like paper shreds.
Hidden in the shreds, the lining, the strings, is a sweet kind of poison.
The room, their salvation, a trick. Their final sips of wine, now spilled
across the floor, and from the crooked spirit rat, an evil laugh arises.
The Mortician's Wife
She didn’t know she was dancing with a mortician
That night, didn’t smell the formaldehyde lingering
On his fingers, as he held her close
Or notice the multitude of graduation rings
That plagued his hands with years
1955, 1968, 1975, and 1999
She didn’t know she was dancing with a mortician
Until she fell in love with him. They married quickly
In an old chapel, chrysanthemums laid carefully across
The maple pews. They had four children
Each plagued with outdated names
Adaline, Nora, Charles, and Otis
She didn’t know she was dancing with a mortician
Until people forgot her name, she was simply the
Mortician's wife. He brought her to the cemetery
To meet his friends, gifted her makeup worn by many others
He plagued her with stories of his favorite deaths
Poisoned, trampled, drunk, and drowned
She didn’t know then that she was dancing with a mortician,
But she knew now, as she turned sick and grew old.
Her cheeks began to gray, and like a vulture
He picked out her maple box and waited.
It was in his plagued nature to count down her days
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