Reflections on the Process—Yvonne M. Estrada

My Dearest Terry,

Well Lovey, thank you for inviting me to play. I have participated in many fevered writing sessions before, and have even extracted a few surprising lines for poems. This process was a little different, but the surprise factor was still there. I found it like being given a particular palette of colors to start with, and seeing what image would be born. Like any poetic form the “rules” are what bring on the brainstorm for me, digging deep for the meaning I am after; this bring its own surprise. The freedom to choose any prompt, the freedom to write anything during the fevered writing, and the freedom to reorganize the words in any sequence made dis•articulations an adventure that took me to a poem I didn’t know was waiting for me. Bring it on!

Advertisement

Reader Poem — Micki Blenkush

Micki Blenkush wrote this poem in response to the December Poetry Prompts:

Engine Red

When the Master who cast us
tires of our absurd stage
will directions come forth
beyond the signs foretold?
Not just the seven horseman
or the white buffalo calf
but actual words written on beasts.
Skunks with caution striped
across their backs or fish with listen
stitched in their scales.

Any language can already predict
propaganda past meaning
even as wolves and panthers arrive
with grief spelled down their sides.
In simple English we’ll call it luck
each time there’s a storm
and all we have to worry about
is what to eat first
when the power goes out.
No one yet at our door
with a machine gun
tells us how to believe.

This is the red of emergency.
Of persons stalled in the turn lane
unsure what to do for the sirens.
This is the color of a woodpecker’s head
persisting along the eaves
despite my banging at windows
and inspecting for holes.
This is the hue of a grandmother’s grief
when she wept my name.
I never heard that color before,
but wanted to move everything back
to let it pass through.

December dis•articulations poem — Terry Wolverton

LISTEN

I rise from the bed of words
where we fuck in perverse ink,
tattoo the sheets gold and blue.
Words are little boats
on an ocean of sheets.
We spread our nets, dip in,
but words run wild;
we can never control their play.

By day, we are only women,
beasts with holes covered up,
our creations policed,
crushed by the dickheads’ sharp words,
flinching into the red sun.
Hush, they can overhear
our venereal warmth,
detect our ambrosial breath.

Around the fire at night,
we are children
writing on the sky,
tattooing horses in the dark.
I know the ancient stories
but you invented the stars.
Wherever we are,
it will never be quiet.

Listen. I will make a true hut
of words and never leave it.
You traffic in story,
tap it out on every sidewalk.
If it’s a predictable disease,
it’s not our fault.
It is the wind’s sure breath
that bothers the golden hours.

 

December dis•articulations poem — Yvonne M. Estrada

Human Recipe Story

Overdue laughter
triggered a high-tech
monsoon.

Everything was reborn
lucky, flowers yellow
and sky blue.

Fortunately,
angels’ wings
sweep everything.

Centuries of memory
become paths
to heaven.

Miles and miles
of illusion
gone.

 

Reader Poem by Henry Medina

I’m taking a poetry workshop in Whittier taught by Eric Morago (check out his web site ericmorago.com). He gave us this prompt: write a poem in which you imagine/describe your own death. Here is what I wrote:

LIVING ON THE EDGE

I will die
at 3 a.m.
trying to escape
the third-story apartment
of a sociopath
who swears
remembering
both parents
fucking him
in his crib
at age one,
cutting him
with blades
& even
inviting their friends
to the
bloody baptism.
Feigning
having to pee
to exit his bedroom,
I will lunge for
the front door,
after being
tormented by his
ice pick,
stapler,
two heavy butcher knives,
an arthritic gun
& dark rats
in that order.
(Miracle
I survived.)
I will run
into his courtyard,
him pursuing me
like an unstoppable memory.
As a last recourse,
I will climb
an eight-inch ledge,
cars honking
& fading far below me.
My right shoe
smeared in shit
from a streetwise cat
(that perhaps
in another life
could have been
loved indoors
by a caring family)
will slip
on the ridge,
& without time
to form a prayer
to accuse
or excuse my stalker,
without fully conceiving
the loneliness
that placed me on that edge,
I will fall
backwards,
my heart
beating
& beating
faster
& faster,
a parachute
trying
to open.
My head
made soup
will hear
the ambulance’s
distant howl,
relieved,
thinking,
“At last
comes
help.”

Reader Prompt by Liz Dalwyn

This reader was moved to offer a prompt to Readers of this blog.

She dragged a white pillow case behind her. It was full of road kill collected there and there and there. It was smelly and dirty. What saddened her the most was that her grandmother’s careful embroidery was almost obliterated.

Reader Poem — Dalwyn

Dalwyn wrote the following poem in response to the December Poetry Prompts:

Simple English

In very simple English they call it good luck
On an old silver platter it is often served up
In old fashioned English they call it fortuitous
In just plain old English it is always gratuitous

Some call her Tyche, Some call her Lakshimi
Most call her the Lady who hasn’t come lately
I asked the Gypsy she said make no mistake
Luck is the place where destiny meets fate

In very proper English they advise you to bless it
Drop a coin in the well and then simply confess it
In very simple English they call it good luck
Took mine to the laundry and told them to press it

 

We invite readers to submit their own poems based on this month’s poetry prompts. The best poem we receive before December 31, 2015 will win a $25 prize. All poems are posted to this blog.

December Fevered Writing — Terry Wolverton

Collaborating poet Yvonne M. Estrada gave Terry four prompts. Terry spent 3 minutes practicing fevered writing on each prompt. She gave these segments back to Yvonne, who will use them to create a new dis•articulations poem.

In very simple English they call it good luck, as if the heavens were smiling down upon you, clearing the path with a sweep of angel wings, divesting all obstacles and keeping you from harm—no traffic tickets, no dog bites, no scaly rashes, no overdue bills. Instead there are flowers and trees and fluffy clouds and your favorite songs always on the radio and the woman you love never disappoints you and everyone admires you for you poems.

An exploration of the absurdity of our existence.
It’s more like a recipe—two parts “Can you believe it?” to one part “What the fuck.” Add a pinch of “God has a sick sense of humor.” There might as well be laughter, pee-your-pants laughter, because otherwise it is all too unbearable. So put on the clown shoes and hop into the tiny car. Bend over and rip the back of your drawers. Squirt yourself with a bottle of seltzer. Be the one who laughs so you’re not the one laughed at. In the end, it’s just a pie in the face.

We were lucky that our water tanks were filled before the electricity failed.
Because when the monsoons came they would have washed away the big screen TVs and the high tech exercise machines, but fortunately the earth had already swallowed them up in the big quake that triggered the meltdown at the nuclear plant. The cows were born sickly after that but we don’t eat cows in my country, so the loss of human life was minimal. We are so lucky that we know we’ll be reborn under better circumstances, that everything we see now is illusion.

Slow and patient centuries can grow to create structures hundreds of miles long. It’s like our story, hundreds of miles of words and images and memory, our history, our language, our culture—all a construction. If I blink my eyes it is gone and I’m journeying to a new world where it all looks different and if there is sky, I will call it something else and maybe it’s yellow instead of blue or maybe a color I can’t perceive in this current structure. Or maybe it’s music, or maybe I have no senses anymore but just know things via some other organ. Or maybe there is no “I’ but just one energy.

We invite and encourage readers to create their own poems based on the prompts and/or the fevered writing and post them in the comments section. The best poem we receive before the end of December will win a $25 prize. All poems we receive will be posted to the blog.

December Fevered Writing — Yvonne M. Estrada

For our dis•articulations collaboration, Terry gave collaborating poet Yvonne M. Estrada four writing prompts. Yvonne engaged in fevered writing with each of them and gave the results back to Terry. These are the words she will use to construct her dis•articulations poem.

republicans are not the condom police
but really they are they want to see what you’re doing in the bedroom they want to make sure that there’s a hole in every condom more women to control all the better their perverse enjoyment. their ancient relatives fucking sheep on a boat inventing venereal disease and beastiality simultaneously. they drive around in their  little police cars pulling people over to see if they have their condoms on, they lie! they are the condom police! it’s all their fault they are the Dickheadz of the millenium

written on beasts
is the true creation story.  the man made ones are so predictable.  the words are tattooed by tapping a sharp stick dipped in ink from a net full of octopi pulled from the ocean and lugged back to the stortellers hut where the wild horses flinch but do not run away they must spread the word they know no one else will bother

of being engine red the fire starts of being sky
blue because the wind can only be felt of being gold are our friends we knew before the age of computers of being brown there are those that will never know of being crushed until there is nothing left bit a good way to die

when it’s dark out 
I play it in the ambrosial hours only. once the sun rises i no longer understand the words. at night there are  so many people that can overhear. I need the cover of the dark so I can see what’s going on without being detected. Under the radar I listen to albums by rap stars. under the stars I listen to G easy and his new album. when it’s dark out I can breathe I can see I can feel the warmth coming up from the sidewalk of the day’s sun. things are quieter the hush of traffic. children gone to bed.

 

Readers are encouraged to write poems in response to the prompts or to the fevered writing. The best Reader Poem we receive in December will win a $25 prize. All poems submitted will be posted to the blog.

Reader Poem — Daniel de Cullá

Daniel de Cullá wrote this poem in response to the December Poetry Prompts:

GOING ON SIN

O sin i
My business daily
With the Seven Deadly Sins
Lust with the Sky
Gluttony with all its pearls on dishes
Envy with eye traffic
To facilitate explosions of creativity
In our king Pride day, livelong
Greed on a fried egg
On the floor of the Rainbow
Wrath blazing medieval shields
Of lives forgotten on a Planet drum
Bucking the Sloth
To begin this poem with a name.

Deadly Sins rise
From the Life’s current
Within the necessities of all the living
From sin to sin biting
As glad omelet from branch to branch
¿Why don’t we joy sins
If we’ll die tomorrow?
Says the scintilla of Life:
It’s lovely the Idolatry of Self¡
As Max Stirner said
In his “The Ego and It’s Own”
Knowing “the age of the mases”
And in his “The False Principle of Our Education:
Humanism and Realism
Are the history of the present experience
And tragedy of our time:
There is but one necessity for us all:
“Going On Sins”.
Everyone sin; Jesus sinned also:
“What is lovely? To sin for God”
Cheering us on his way to be full.
In a complete state of sin
One is in a sense with haughty eyes
Pride going before.

O sin i
I sin many a day
These:
“I have yet to ask to myself
What do we use for Lifeboats
When the Ship goes down?” (My)
And answering:
Women have in her Bust two lemons
And more down the devil
Near the lemon tree’ flower:
I want to sleep with him¡
Or
As a little sea boat
I’m coming and going with ups and downs
Goodbye¡
I’m going away from World
My lust unloved¡