abbreviated.

To the middle-aged Venezuelan woman who has a crush on you.

Mon, 06 May 2013 23:45:00 -0500

I don’t expect I’ll ever see you so I conjure you in pants and glasses

hair that’s long and dark and frizzy in the morning

and again late in the day

I used to want his silence too

its batteries and buttons

He never spoke when I gave him my tongue instead of sound

He never seemed to like it

but he let me do it

What I’m trying to say is I know how you want to be reduced

What I’m trying to say is he won’t reduce you

but he’ll let you do it

After you said you slept with someone else

Sat, 04 May 2013 13:24:00 -0500

I dreamed common things

My last lover came back

I kept my teeth

The next day I drove

past a man fixing traffic lights in mid-air

and then on to the mall

where I bought six pairs of cotton underwear on sale

carried them in their brown bag back to the car

because there’s a world

and it moves

I should tell you how that man who loved me said I walked ugly and awkward with caution

how even if I did before he said it

I did after

aubade.

Sat, 04 May 2013 13:12:00 -0500

In my fantasy I can explain it

how quiet is the way the room contains us

and the way it gives when we expand

how it’s first the skin of your hand

and then your hand

because i want to want to, not to have to.

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 22:57:00 -0500

I’m always so sure this is the moment before the moment they tell me and so I want to eat everything and fuck you against the back of the front door

Driving over the bridge this afternoon I saw two kids I thought one was standing behind the other but when I passed them I saw they were standing beside each other one leaning back with his fingers curled around the chain link between his hand and air I remember because right then I knew I wasn’t home

Last week someone asked how to tell whether we write different stories or different versions of the story

Every morning you ask how I’ve slept

Still every night I try so hard to not sleep

memorandum of understanding.

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 11:34:00 -0500

In my fantasy I can convince you I’m not worth it

I don’t want your secrets

or a common knowledge

the code to get into the building

the doctor appointment on Tuesday

the way we fold towels

It’s not serious and growing

the size of us

I eat alone

My twice-yearly workshop, the Seven Doctors Project, has started...

Sun, 17 Mar 2013 21:47:00 -0500

My twice-yearly workshop, the Seven Doctors Project, has started again (it doesn’t seem so long at all since I posted my homework from our last semester), and this week, I and a couple other faculty members are going to talk about revision.

Specifically, we’re going to be telling the stories of poems and stories—because of course, they form and shift and shape-change until, eventually, they tell us they’ve grown up and they want to be left alone and get out of the room and close the door already.

Lately, I’ve started a lot of my poems on paper—the older I get, the more urgency I feel to write things down as soon as they appear. In the past, I’d chew on a line in my head for days, wait until the poem was nearly fully formed before sitting down to bang it out. But lately, I like the mess of writing. The hard black line through the wrong words. The little arrows and insertions. It feels alive—or at least qualms my fear of forgetting what must be written, and that it must written in the first place.

Most of the things I post here are second or third drafts—this blog is a blog of poems in the middle of being written, mostly. The poem posted just before this post, for example, doesn’t look now like what it did when I posted it—and that post was of course different than the poem’s beginning.

If writing is a process of trying to work out a problem, it’s doubly so. There’s working out a problem, and then there’s working out the problem of articulating that process.

I start always with the things that happen, and then, what those things look like—the stuff of them, the little scenes, their rhythm. Revision is about sharpening, cutting. It’s no surprise I like intimacy and violence in the poem—I write with intimacy and violence, too.

I don’t know what story I’m going to tell in class this week. But today, I thought I’d tell the small story of the most recent poem I’ve written—show you how it started (above), and where it went (the post previous), and where, at least for now, it ended up (right here).

In the bathroom cleaning the wound

Later I’ll think of the scene a friend wrote

the chainsaw chewing bone

the waiting for an answer and trajectory of blood

the man who told her none of that was romance

Here let me hold back this flap of skin while you go in for gravel

I came up with a handful of it from the street where we were walking on our walk for tomatoes

held a little blood

and told the origin of dirt’s accord

the bag of earth and air

the molecules that made that fragrance

Your head is so close to mine

when you slip the flat blade sideways into flesh

work out the first black rock

after falling.

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 00:54:00 -0500

Later I’ll think of the scene a frend wrote

the saw

the crack of bone

the waiting for an answer and trajectory of blood

the man who told her none of that was romance

Here let me hold back this flap of skin while you go in for gravel

I came up with a handful of it from the street where we were walking on our walk for tomatoes

held a little blood

and told the origin of dirt’s accord

the bag of earth and air and molecules that made that smell

Your head is so close to mine

when you slip the flat blade sideways into flesh

work out the first black rock

dream poem 6.

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 12:01:00 -0500

Last night I dreamed our sheets were strung up in the basement my mother was there was a rhythm into the mouth of the washer and out shaking out towels I came up behind and she turned and was startled to see me to see what was behind me and after I died I was still there and transparent and she could still see me I don’t know where she got the roll of clear tape we’ll do this she said and she tore off a piece and a piece and a piece and stuck each to the space where my throat had been whole

ars amatoria.

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 23:02:22 -0600

In my fantasy I’m walking toward you

and I’ve never seen you

and just before I tell you what I call you

you push up the sleeve of your sweater

Later

after we have names

you bring me a glass of water

and I give it back empty

we're not the things we leave.

Mon, 04 Feb 2013 23:52:00 -0600

The last time he came over

four months after the last time he came over

he greeted me the way he always had

and I’d forgotten all about it

the familiar pause

I hadn’t had to take

On Friday a girl

with half her hair shorn off

stomped her foot

then jumped to stomp with both her feet

and asked how worthless

of a man standing on a table shouting we’re going to die

and love is worthless

How worthless she said

and stomped and shouted

23 and awful

like we are when we’re 23

The new plan of course is always leaving

We don’t always move to do this

though I’m packing all my books and creams this week

Last week I cut my hair

Weeks before

I went alone in the car

Weeks before

I let someone into the car

We’re not the things we leave

though we might be the things we do to leave them

That day he came over

I told him I’d ran into a friend

I didn’t say the things she’d said about our throats

about rehearsing all this till our throats are worn

and blue

and bright

notes on the completion of joy.

Wed, 23 Jan 2013 23:46:19 -0600

Once you put a dream-me in a paper teahouse

I heard now you’re not going to Japan

Now you’ve discovered you can cry in public at the movies

and do it with feeling

I remember when you used to press my arm

describe machines and things you’d like to build

I described your cock to you while you were quoting Calvin

I put my mouth up to your ear and didn’t touch it and spoke loud

but I was never going to make it through that bony labyrinth

I never bought a bag of chips to take to that football party where I would’ve met your friends

You never took me to the Benson porn shop

All these notes are written in the shorthand I devised

half the pages in the notebook wrinkled

where a little water crept

from a bag of ice I left on the desk

libretto.

Wed, 09 Jan 2013 15:47:00 -0600

In my fantasy I call you James

and after Don Giovanni’s been dragged to hell

you hold my coat up behind me

and tell me where my arms are

weeks later.

Thu, 03 Jan 2013 23:28:00 -0600

I missed your body

you said

I heard the sound of it weeks later

in the deepest part of winter

when my body most required rain

What things we chase

standing at the sink at midnight with a bar of soap

I’ve missed it too

I tell you

I would tell you

before i explained.

Thu, 27 Dec 2012 00:09:23 -0600

I thought I heard water

but there was the cat

licking the top of the sideboard

which at the time appeared perfectly uninterrupted

by seam or crumb

You brought me a slice of bread

a bowl of soup

a glass of wine

each thing on the table

where it went

except a spoon

which I got up to get

tapes 'n tapes.

Sun, 02 Dec 2012 13:32:00 -0600

As many of you know, I started Abbreviated more than two years ago as a way to blog away from the blog I’d had at the time, a personal style blog that became too much, in a lot of ways, for me to continue. I wasn’t sure what Abbreviated would become, and for a while, it was a catch-all for matters of writing, poetry and the occasional song. As this little blog took on a life of its own, it became more streamlined—and now, it really is largely a testing ground for my new work, a place to put things while I think about them, a sort of date book that I use to remind myself to keep writing because, lord, sometimes I go months without doing it.

My poetry is better for the blogging, if only because the blog taps my shoulder, tells me to write something down.

Obviously, I’ve still got my other interests. And while they don’t appear here, or on that old blog of yore, they will be appearing elsewhere. I’ve started a second tumblr of less consequence but of great fun, at least for me, one suggested by a friend of mine and finally brought to fruition. Check it out here. Scroll to the bottom to read about how it works, maybe send in a suggestion.

I’ll still be here. And I’ll be there, too. As they say in High Fidelity, what really matters is what you like. I like a lot of things.

excerpt.

Sat, 01 Dec 2012 11:33:07 -0600

Gray light this morning made me think of this old poem, written as part of a longer piece several years back. I’m sure I’ve lived a whole lifetime since then.

I’ve not or hardly slept

but still, December’s first

gray comes, a shock

of slick, smoke-colored ice.

It would be pretty

somewhere else, its sound the sound

of unremitting, the thousand separate

cracks of morning’s sheet;

here, mid-city traffic trumps

winter’s beginning. When you call,

the freeze is just a nuisance

shuffled into sloppy rows

because the day is Saturday:

We have places to go.

The weatherman knows, tells us

the road will be less treacherous

by noon; you’ll go to work.

I’ll pick up.

I’ll forget about the static dawn,

the want for what we can’t

control, pristine, hysteric

cold resounding in my chest—

This afternoon, you’ll bring a new TV.

Its sound will comfort me.

in twos.

Thu, 22 Nov 2012 21:24:00 -0600

I’m sure someone said once

that in twos

one person always loves more

and that’s not who you want to be

I’m sure it was someone’s mother who said it

but not my mother

who’s only ever said

be safe

It must’ve been a friend

trying to explain it to me

in terms women understand

or want to

I’ve been letting the record run

I fall asleep before the end

and in the morning

I start in the middle

awake for the end

and it’s never familiar

I wish I’d learned a different language in sleep

but I’ve learned only one

They all spoke it

behind me at the back of the nose

the sudden sound of breathing

and remembering to breathe

When someone says this is the one you don’t want to be

you always are that one

or you just were

or you will be

I was

trying to remember today in the car

when I passed the turn to your house and didn’t look

when I kept going

after he entered damp and cardamom-scented.

Wed, 14 Nov 2012 13:49:00 -0600

The gallery smells like an old summer camp cabin

cedar and smoke and mint

I know why

and it makes me think

now I know what the counselors were doing

outside with each other

I’m in a school chair between two men I’d fuck

if they asked

My heart beats hard against the back of the chair

I think of uncrossing my legs

each man’s hand on my thigh

I cross my arms over my heart and it beats

The man reading rewrote beautiful poems

for men none of us know

I know I smell sticky-sweet too

Outside

the rain is a season itself

Everything in me is hungry

homework, week six.

Tue, 13 Nov 2012 14:00:00 -0600

Last week was the last week for homework—a personal essay—and I didn’t do it. Work writing got in the way, as it often does. It’s always flummoxing, that paradigm of putting the work aside to do the work that pays for rent, groceries, gas, Sunday shoes, doctors. I’m too this or that now to make some dreams happen, but I’ll always dream of a time when I get up in the morning, make a cup of tea and sit down at my desk to write poems. Of course, I do do this sometimes, but in the dream, it’s all I do, and the sun slants in just right, and there’s a tree right there, and in a while, someone will be home again, and this is the way it goes in my head when I’m in the car on the way to the office.

I can’t complain, really. And anyway, I’ve already got new work to share—not an essay, to be sure, but perhaps all the poems together approximate something like it.

homework, week five.

Wed, 31 Oct 2012 22:45:48 -0500

This week, we slipped in an extra topic: memoir vs. fiction, specifically when to write your memoir and when to turn the events of your life into a fictional (or at least partially fictional) account. The prompt: Write a short piece of fiction or poetry that wholly or partially fictionalizes a true event in your life. The event should be one in which you committed a crime, or a crime was committed against you. It can be as small or as major as you’d like.

So, here’s where I tell you I did the homework for this week and I’m not posting it here. The question of real life vs. fiction is a very real one for writers, and one we have to face, I think, every time we sit down to write. I’m not shy about exploiting my own experiences, actions, relationships, thoughts, etc. for the writing—I’ve always believed my writing is more authentic when I do, and obviously so. I write about my life. It’s relatively safe to assume my first-person narrator is me, though I would say, in some instances, it’s a slant version, a parallel me doing or saying things I wish I could or wish I hadn’t. I’ve always been wary, however, about too openly exploiting the lives of the people I know—difficult, considering they end up in the work as much as I do. Usually, I try to keep situations vague enough to protect identities. I use pronouns or change names. Lately, I’ve been toying with changing genders, replacing my oft-used “you” with something more distant. This is about as fictional as I get.

In my homework for this week, I confessed to a crime I committed—When I was little, I stole a book from school. I’m actually still ashamed of that, and I was uncomfortable confessing, but my poetry is all about my discomfort and my shame anyway. But this week, I also confessed for someone else, and that sensitive material is, I think, too sensitive to be put into the public sphere without permission. There are no names and no identifying details, but this person would know, and I don’t feel right about it. I do believe it’s right for the piece, but sometimes, the pieces aren’t always right for the world at the time of their creation.

This is really the heart of what we talked about—the judgments writers must make. It’s so easy for us to dismiss what we write out of insecurity or the general crippling doubt that drives every writer into and out of the desk chair, but it’s another thing entirely to examine what we’ve done and determine whether its importance is worth the risk of release. In the case of the prose poem I’ve written this week, I don’t think it’s important enough.

Instead, I hope you’ll take a look at the two other poems I’ve posted this week (right there below this entry) and maybe give a thought. They’re works in progress, like anything else, and, more importantly this week, exploitative of me alone.