The Literate Teacher's Manifesto

One activity we do frequently in my ELA class is "talk back" to texts. That might take the form of disagreeing or simply adding to the discussion started by a work we are reading. Right after the Marjory Stoneman Douglas shooting, we read The Way It Is   by William Stafford, and I asked students to write about what their thread is. I found myself unable to compose an answer of my own, though. I dwelled on it until writing group that afternoon, when I finally found the voice to write a response. This poem is what I wrote. More so than a thread, Mr. Stafford, there is a trail I follow. It goes among things that stay the same. But it doesn't stay. People wonder what I am looking for. I don't know how to explain about the trail. It is made up of questions, like breadcrumbs. I think that others might see the trail too. But most choose not to look, or to direct their gaze upward to the benign sky. While I'm following the trail, I never feel lost. In...

Grace sits alone in the hot kitchen. languid flies sip sugar sweet tea stains butter beans boil in indolent pots and salvation steeps in a Mason jar on the Formica counter shot with gold. gray dustbunnies shit in corners junebugs spread indecent wings and fly away into the yellow sky to be yanked back and tied  to the malevolent fingers of children. peeled paint white fence stands creaking top rail fell down into weeds. rusted screen door spreads tentative fingers where concrete rots into gravel-- stained boots leave red mud clots on the welcome mat. This is not at all a good description of my grandmother's kitchen! It was written in response to a dream I had, where my grandmother's farmhouse (normally one of the most inviting places I know) was like a weird, "dark side" version of itself. It was a terrifying dream, and it stuck with me. The images were haunting, and I wanted to try and do them justice with language.  

I am running. In my legs breaking tendons Ligaments with a sound like torn silk Stretch as I snatch for pieces of you to hold. The gathering of fragile things; this is my harvest time. In a stasis of light My eyes are blind. I am the seer who cannot see. Weeping as time overflows its banks in its tide, your small white body. My father's hands, beaten and worn. My grandfather's memories. Grief is a lonely bedmate with cold feet, And I will not, I will not have this. The bridge supports me as I scatter Fragments of my heart to the winds Choosing a release.  The fragments skim away, leaving nothing behind but vacancy:  the emptiness of soul. This poem started as several journal entries in an old writer's notebook of mine. The entries were drawn from several traumatic events in my life: the death of a pet, the year my dad was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, my grandfathers' (on both sides) battles with Alzheimers....

lackadaisical blues she smiles slowly--                                   opening her arms to embrace the sun                                   yawning with the soft                                   languid kisses of summer warmth she is lying in a field--                                   desiring the sun with all her might                                   stretching lazily and reaching                                   toward the skies she is worthless--...

59th Street Studio sit in dark orange light bleeds through  drips in my hands you light a cigarette and pace the room. night extinguishes your face smoke traces white veins in air behind you piano strains lilt away as we quaff the last draught of the twilight before dawn. watch morning's rosy axe cleave the night lingering about my window as the shadow of you dissolves leaving no trace of your passing. sweep my hand across the page swipe away a tear and mark my place if only to measure what i've lost. This poem was inspired by Georgia O'Keefe's 59th Street Studio . It's not one of her better known paintings,  but it is one of my favorites. I imagined this story taking place in the room lit by this window, where a woman imagines the ghost of a man she lost somewhere along the way. They share a single night lit in orange by this window, but in the morning she has to accept that he is gone and move on.

The sun has fallen from the expanse of my blood. I'm chasing tornadoes  and denying my incongruent angles to sands in the wind. Too many waltzes have ended, Mr. Stevens, and not enough begun-- from the symmetry of culture and poetry the music continues in three-quarter time. Ariadne weaves beautiful bandages  of silver and gold; I tear them from my eyes, rejoicing in my inconsistency. Hating you almost as much as me and still wanting to trace veins on your neck-- to touch delicate hands pointing out the stars. One of the things I love most about poetry are allusions. I love to write them, and I love trying to solve all of the allusions in the work of other poets. Would that I could solve all of the allusions in TS Eliot's The Wasteland ! This poem is me playing around with allusion, language, and imagery. There's not that much of a deep meaning behind it (I don't think...) but I love the language!

Awake Stars splashed across the vaulted sky, I stare unsteadily overhead reaching for sleep with all my might. It doesn't come. Patterns flicker across my eyelids intermingled with words that dance through the broken branches of my thoughts. Boredom stops up my brain and my concentration stops on the paper. It stares blankly up at me. I stare blankly back. I've counted the stars fourteen times tonight and every time I came up with a different number. The clock blinks its red-eyed gaze at four a.m. and my head pounds with pent-up thought: dances no one will ever see, songs no one will ever sing, emotions I might never feel again. I've written seventy novels here in my head; Friends I've never met but know better than myself, terrors that lurk for me in the shadows the moon won't reach. I am a great insomniac. I can do anything when sleep doesn't come. So save me the Nobel prize and when I accept, I'll t...