Improv. 5 (week 1)

This time I figured id go for my own version of  We Real Cool by Gwendolyn Brooks. i took note of the repeating "we" inside her poem and was wondering if I could improv that same punch with a different pronoun.

She weeps like she’s nineteen, catching 

glimpses of tears floating like almonds 

after a monsoon. She collapses her lungs 

into her chest and they sink low enough 

as if to be dissolved in the earth.

She had water lodged in her lungs, 

Bubbles caressing the folds of her skin. 

The way how the blue of her veins run disjointed up

her arm. Blotched, no gingerly stamped colors,

No raunchy browns. Just ruined mascara 

trays litter her dresser. She paints her face 

like she’s four. Rubbing velvet into black. 

She splashes until she's portrait-less, then weeps.

Not like visor knitted black bonnets,

but encrusted six tier crowns of prom days.

She silently lets her finger-paint run.

Improv. 4 (week 1)

I got fascinated by Janet Lewis's "Remembered Morning"  and the way that its innocence seemed to shine through in such a small poem. The use of the Pastorial in this piece also captured me in a way that I wanted to try to emulate in my own piece by capturing the writer outside of a city element. I also tried to introduce form to it by going for iambic pentameter for more practice while trying to avoid the singy-songyness of rhyme.

        



 Wilted leaves and cherry groves tipped 
asunder by winter’s axe. Write 
about the world. About dirt filled cracks,
pregnancies, forgotten nights of passion 
between Mother Nature and Father Time.
How the stench of Atlanta is anything but people. 
Its fingerprints, a small set of fingertips cowering
at the sight of a new season. 
Write about the cigs. The small curly S’s glazing
over kegs of nighttime liquor and jazz. 
Write about dying trees, angry leafs, and roots. 
Wet water, wetter rain. Sketch dancers who bound 
top of toes like mountains and gracefully poised 
curtsies. Artists who crack cans wide open, frame 
newspaper clippings about poverty. 
The alcoholic, his typewriter abuse, the way he smashes
each key and shreds. The chain smoker reading 
a pamphlet about GOD. Write about these things, 
they might give new life.