'A man slitting the belly of a fish in the sand.' Which I misread as 'A man sitting on the belly of a fish in the sand' at first. And I actually love the 'real' line and my misreading of it--just in case you wanna take this in a more surreal direction. . .Like Kendra, I feel like I'm right there. As an ocean person myself, I love it, especially the last two lines.
Tresha!!! This is INCREDIBLE. I felt like I was there experiencing everything with you, especially juicing the best burger :-) "what we wanted / our lives to look like. I wasn't even thinking about this coastline then, / or how close I was to pure joy, moving to the tropics where I have nothing / but boiled beans and cilantro..." OMG you did it. You captured it. You just... you did it. <3
I am twenty-one and marry the first man who makes me feel not alone in the world. As everyone but me foresees, the waves of my unhappiness roll in unceasingly on the shores of that Tennessee basement apartment like the rains of every storm through our flashing-less door. There are only four good months; nonetheless, being a good Christian girl, I cannot divorce for reasons of discontent. But no one wrote in stone that I must be fully present. I read 123 books that year, escaping to Pemberley, Persepolis, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, to Ponyboy, Jo March, Anne and Marilla and Matthew. Two years later, my husband sleeps with another woman to give us the proper, church-approved reason we need. After the filing, I never see him again.
I am thirty-three, living in Germany, and birthing the realization that the partner I chose in immigrant-crisis-mode is not the partner I can thrive with in other, more relaxed states of being. Religious no more, I find myself an apartment of my own—a beautiful place on the river, but now a safe distance from the water—move out with the help of my girls, and rescue myself from half-living a life. There is grief, yes, but mostly there is triumph: I left when I should have the first time. I did what I had to to not abandon my own soul. I listened to myself instead of the stone tablets. I did not sacrifice myself on someone else’s altar. Now I read to learn how to write my story, not to escape it.
I look at myself in the mirror and find: I am dawning, and I am the heart of the fire. I have found the spring at the source of the river, and it is me. The dance that set Earth spinning, I am the womb of its steps. The breath at the center of the wind, me.
[Disclaimer: I want to acknowledge that refugee immigrants have a more difficult experience than I could ever imagine. That is true, and it is also true that starting over in a new country of your own volition is extremely challenging.]
[PPS: Writing this post was itself an opening for me. I took a dance break to find my way to the ending and felt things shift in my body and arrived in a new way. Still reeling… can’t thank you enough for these prompts, Kelly!!!]
Yay for dance breaks!! I think you've got yourself a potential book here (or maybe a long poem). I can relate to this in an odd way. I never married (I'm more of a FWB girl) because I was--I tell myself I was smart, but most likely I was just lucky--not to marry for these kinds of reasons. . .I LOVE the ending: 'I am dawning, and I am the heart of the fire. . .The breath at the center of the wind, me' God damn! That's gorgeous. Keep this in your 'great stuff' folder.
Yay for Kelly!! Yay for a month of magic!! Yay for these threads!! Here's a possible rough first stanza of my next (nontraditional) heroic sonnet crown (or maybe I'll write a sonnet-sestina (a series of sonnets that repeats end words in the pattern of a sestina)
You asked me to list fourteen
things
I love
and I did: family
friends
water
acceptance letters
horse racing
loving on other people’s kids, or dogs
a route at work that makes me feel like a queen
when my poem makes someone laugh or cry
art that makes me feel like I feel when I look at Homer’s The Gulf Stream
sexy texts
a bull on Bear Gulch Road who reminds me of a bull I owned in high school, EXT Trust
. . .and in my mind I see the sonnet series ending with the speaker looking closer at the 'you' and sees joy in what / who is right in front of her. . .but who knows? The poem could go in a totally different direction.
Love the turns and contrasts here, and would love to learn more about heroic nontraditional sonnets. I feel totally out of my depth as I’m not sure what that is that you’re going for 😂 Time to educate myself more!
A heroic sonnet crown is just a series of 15 sonnets (traditionally they'd be shakespearian) that repeat their beginning and ending lines of each sonnet :) But really I'm aiming for the same things as I would in a free verse poem: interesting imagery, surprising turns, making my reader laugh or cry, etc. This is still in the very experimental stage
The Average Day in Costa Rica
In the coffee shop the Canadians tell me how glad they are
They left Canada. All day we do yoga on the beach together,
Then have a cup at Jose’s café. After they leave
I write and stretch and write and stretch.
Jose brings me coffee and tells me about the best burger
He’s ever cooked. How he took his time and watched it carefully juicing
Very slow. I’ll walk home at sunset when the weather is finally cool,
A man slitting the belly of a fish in the sand.
I’ll remember one night in college, the long conversation I had
With my roommate in the dorm kitchen about what we wanted
Our lives to look like. I wasn’t even thinking about this coastline then,
Or how close I was to pure joy, moving to the tropics where I have nothing,
But boiled beans and cilantro, and all this time to listen
To the little parrots in the trees, and the ocean
Continuing its long conversation with the sand, telling it about all the places
Its seen, as it massages the shoulders of the endless, warm shore.
'A man slitting the belly of a fish in the sand.' Which I misread as 'A man sitting on the belly of a fish in the sand' at first. And I actually love the 'real' line and my misreading of it--just in case you wanna take this in a more surreal direction. . .Like Kendra, I feel like I'm right there. As an ocean person myself, I love it, especially the last two lines.
Tresha!!! This is INCREDIBLE. I felt like I was there experiencing everything with you, especially juicing the best burger :-) "what we wanted / our lives to look like. I wasn't even thinking about this coastline then, / or how close I was to pure joy, moving to the tropics where I have nothing / but boiled beans and cilantro..." OMG you did it. You captured it. You just... you did it. <3
'Parents wilt / into wildflower' Kelly, you are a goddess sometimes
"isn't it lucky?/ I didn't get everything so I could have/ this instead?" Awesome! Just perfect! I need to keep that.
Awww. Thank you <3 So glad it found you at the right time.
I think this poem found half the world at the right time. Jeez. We alllllll need it!!!
I am twenty-one and marry the first man who makes me feel not alone in the world. As everyone but me foresees, the waves of my unhappiness roll in unceasingly on the shores of that Tennessee basement apartment like the rains of every storm through our flashing-less door. There are only four good months; nonetheless, being a good Christian girl, I cannot divorce for reasons of discontent. But no one wrote in stone that I must be fully present. I read 123 books that year, escaping to Pemberley, Persepolis, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, to Ponyboy, Jo March, Anne and Marilla and Matthew. Two years later, my husband sleeps with another woman to give us the proper, church-approved reason we need. After the filing, I never see him again.
I am thirty-three, living in Germany, and birthing the realization that the partner I chose in immigrant-crisis-mode is not the partner I can thrive with in other, more relaxed states of being. Religious no more, I find myself an apartment of my own—a beautiful place on the river, but now a safe distance from the water—move out with the help of my girls, and rescue myself from half-living a life. There is grief, yes, but mostly there is triumph: I left when I should have the first time. I did what I had to to not abandon my own soul. I listened to myself instead of the stone tablets. I did not sacrifice myself on someone else’s altar. Now I read to learn how to write my story, not to escape it.
I look at myself in the mirror and find: I am dawning, and I am the heart of the fire. I have found the spring at the source of the river, and it is me. The dance that set Earth spinning, I am the womb of its steps. The breath at the center of the wind, me.
[Disclaimer: I want to acknowledge that refugee immigrants have a more difficult experience than I could ever imagine. That is true, and it is also true that starting over in a new country of your own volition is extremely challenging.]
[PPS: Writing this post was itself an opening for me. I took a dance break to find my way to the ending and felt things shift in my body and arrived in a new way. Still reeling… can’t thank you enough for these prompts, Kelly!!!]
Kendra! Im so glad such AMAZING writing and transformation is coming out of them. Yay for making our own magic!
Yay for dance breaks!! I think you've got yourself a potential book here (or maybe a long poem). I can relate to this in an odd way. I never married (I'm more of a FWB girl) because I was--I tell myself I was smart, but most likely I was just lucky--not to marry for these kinds of reasons. . .I LOVE the ending: 'I am dawning, and I am the heart of the fire. . .The breath at the center of the wind, me' God damn! That's gorgeous. Keep this in your 'great stuff' folder.
Thank you so much, T, for your very kind words!
Whether you were smart or lucky or both — good for you! 😂
Yay for Kelly!! Yay for a month of magic!! Yay for these threads!! Here's a possible rough first stanza of my next (nontraditional) heroic sonnet crown (or maybe I'll write a sonnet-sestina (a series of sonnets that repeats end words in the pattern of a sestina)
You asked me to list fourteen
things
I love
and I did: family
friends
water
acceptance letters
horse racing
loving on other people’s kids, or dogs
a route at work that makes me feel like a queen
when my poem makes someone laugh or cry
art that makes me feel like I feel when I look at Homer’s The Gulf Stream
sexy texts
a bull on Bear Gulch Road who reminds me of a bull I owned in high school, EXT Trust
. . .and in my mind I see the sonnet series ending with the speaker looking closer at the 'you' and sees joy in what / who is right in front of her. . .but who knows? The poem could go in a totally different direction.
So lovely to witness all this magical writing and conversations. Thank you all <3
Love the turns and contrasts here, and would love to learn more about heroic nontraditional sonnets. I feel totally out of my depth as I’m not sure what that is that you’re going for 😂 Time to educate myself more!
A heroic sonnet crown is just a series of 15 sonnets (traditionally they'd be shakespearian) that repeat their beginning and ending lines of each sonnet :) But really I'm aiming for the same things as I would in a free verse poem: interesting imagery, surprising turns, making my reader laugh or cry, etc. This is still in the very experimental stage
Thanks for explaining! My favorite turns here were water / acceptance letters / horse racing ☺️