panic button
December 26, 2007
I start school in less than two weeks. Not only will I be the oldest one in the class, I will also be coming in a quarter after everyone else. Way for me to be a loser. A late-starting, old-being wreck of a student.
Everything in me is telling me not to go, that I can’t do it, that my mind is not agile enough, that the administrators don’t really want me there, that my writing isn’t (and never will be) good enough, that I won’t be able to write anything once I am in the program, that I won’t be able to make it through, et cetera.
I’ve been sitting here for half an hour trying to think of what else to say, but looking at the paragraph above this one has me feeling light headed and queasy. No more words are coming to me. I feel like I am going to pass out. I think I am going to lie in bed now and rock myself to sleep.
Oh, and that blogging break I said I was going on a couple of weeks ago? I am going on it for real now. Starting now. For real this time.
read write poem #6: get your collaboration on!
December 23, 2007
Christine and I worked together this week, following the optional Read Write Prompt of collaborating with another participant.
Over the course of several days, we wrote this poem through e-mail. We went back and forth, one stanza at a time, each of us providing a stanza. I started the poem off, and Christine ended it. We kept the same pattern throughout — each stanza containing four lines and each line containing four syllables. There was more to the poem, but we cut the beginning off, since the poem really seemed to start once we got into the restroom. There was some stuff going on in a house and inside a car, but that didn’t seem to be the heart of the poem.
We did a little bit of editing once we were done, and below is what we came up with.
* * *
Wrong places
On the walls of
the bathroom stalls,
“No” is written
repeatedly
over words of
love and anger.
Who erases
proof of feeling?
If I were to
write anything
on a bathroom
wall what would it
say about me?
Strawberry girl
looking for love
in wrong places,
like these dank stalls.
When did it come
to this, thinking
too long about
scrawled words from
strangers, drunken
missives, and not
my own wisdom —
like tarot cards
with all the good
ones gone missing.
For a good time,
call the Empress
of abundance,
grounded to the
earth. Don’t call me.
* * *
To read more poetry from Read Write Poem participants, click on the button at the top of this post.
my american sentences
December 22, 2007
Someone’s written “No” all over the elevator walls: No, No, No.
my american sentences
December 20, 2007
Just when I’ve settled into the short days, the days start getting longer.
my american sentences
December 19, 2007
I shall evict my uterus for raising a ruckus inside me.
(Yes, it’s that time of the month. TMI. Deal with it.)
my american sentences
December 18, 2007
Tonight all the leaves skitter across the streets like rodents, so I swerve.
my american sentences
December 17, 2007
Say I’m not the only one who drools on the bathroom floor while flossing.
my american sentences
December 16, 2007
I hold my hands to light as if light could help me understand my hands.
my american sentences
December 15, 2007
(I’m not going on a complete break. I’ve decided to start writing my daily American Sentences again and to share them here. That is all — carry on.)
The speculum inside me cranks me as open as I’ve ever been.
on a break
December 14, 2007
I don’t think I want to blog for a while. I just don’t have it in me right now. I’m dealing with some personal things that I think are better to work through on my own and not share here. So I am on a break of sorts. Starting now.
This is my blog wherein I, Dana Guthrie Martin, write things and stuff. Most of the time, writing and I hobble along in a sort of three-legged race where there is no finish line. (more...)
It is fascinating to see into other minds, especially across culture. It has given me the impression that experience and perception are much more commonly shared than doctrines of cultural difference often suggest. — Paul Hoover
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beg, borrow, but don't steal
This work is licensed under Creative Commons. If you don’t credit Dana (by using her full name and preferably by linking back to the appropriate post) for however you copy, distribute, transmit or adapt her words, you are being bad. And naughty. And she will have her servant monkeys hunt you down and cut your hands off so you can never copy, distribute, transmit or adapt anyone’s work again and call it your own.
(Unless, of course, you were to use your butt cheeks to manipulate your keyboard with the copying, distributing, transmitting, adapting and whatnot, but Dana fortunately has only met one person whose butt cheeks are that talented. He could play a major third on a piano using nothing but his ass. She kids you not.).
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flick, flick, flick
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i cannot be bought
