from the first assignment of the semester for my creative writing class.
strange marks cross my skin
but bring me no pain. i woke
late, my sheets tangled.
twelve bells envelop
the neighborhood at midnight.
who said they should ring?
cascading cups lie
stacked, filled with playing children
in a narrow gorge.
i carefully pinch
and pluck strings at the right times
but my thumb fails me.
of the two streetlights
outside my window i much
prefer the softer.
today in my creative writing class our professor brought in a certain campus newspaper and had us write blackout poetry from it. i haven't really read the article and would probably have a bad time if i did. one day i'll write about ai and that's not today.
corner the edges upon
us and come out
to nothing. we will be inescapable
and no wonder. accept
help, heft hundreds of echoes.
try women, and have god
for yourself. now we live
plagued, but so what? big deal.
this month, i will be attempting an inktober challenge of writing a poem (or piece of short fiction) every day with a list of prompts. i plan to post them every few days, or when i have something i feel is worth sharing. this was inspired by the wonderful createglue, who often motivates me to write, and i'll be using their prompt list. that said, here's day one. associated song: day one by hemlock.
we read a story in book club last spring about a girl
who turned into a mountain, slowed and calcified,
with rivulets down her back and a treeline blanket.
it wasn't very good, caught fighting
the author's fractured focus and oil-baron aspirations,
but i think it would be nice
to be part of the landscape
the story mentioned in the poem is "rock jenny" by callum angus from his book "a natural history of transition." i have a pdf if you're interested.
consider low tide.
the water is peeled
back slowly and forcefully
leaving tangles resting on outcroppings.
i’ve always swam in fresh water,
lakes and streams with mud to my knees
and toes battling rocks.
my mud is not the mud of bay,
the mud of small bodies
and their neighbors’ dead,
empty homes.
mine is the river that runs past the developed floodplain,
the river near the substation,
water warmer than the air and pregnant with pollen,
the river not deep enough until it floods.
one weekend i went up the mountain
to powerwash the porch. i biked
past the stream, small bugs swirling and
gravel spitting from my tires while i swiped
sweat aside and spat on the road.
we painted the bathrooms first, me and some girl
whose name i don't remember. she was old,
or at least older than me; my curls
weren't yet long enough to tie back, connect.
later, layers of dirt came at my feet,
all the dust that shouldn’t have been swept
out the door and whatever else had steeped.
"too long in one spot and you’ll damage the wood,"
you said. it's gone now, though it used to be good.
loose sonnet i wrote for creative writing. feedback very welcome!
this summer, i undertook the @bobkeposting summer movie challenge. inspired by a post by @caseyjune, i have decided to blog about the endeavor. i was already attempting to watch a solid amount of movies this summer due to my goal of watching a movie every week for a total of 52 on the year. if you wanna you can follow my letterboxd or just look at it. some of this post is kinda short because i didn't wanna cover-what i said in my letterboxd reviews again although a lot of them i did that anyway. take a shot every time i said movie in that paragraph.
composed by hans zimmer or ludwig goranson: sinners
this one was easy. i already wanted to watch Sinners, and it certainly lived up to the hype. i don't think i have much to say on this that hasn't been said, i'm very sad i didn't see it in theaters and it's amplified my interest in fingerstyle guitar.
letterboxd top 250: singin' in the rain
watched this one twice actually. i'm a fan. originally watched it because my friends had watched it in the spring without me. i was gonna watch it a third time this summer because someone wanted to but somehow july and august disappeared. it's a very good movie, but the new york section really drags.
title with five or more words: furiosa: a mad max saga
i liked fury road, and this is quite good too but in a different way. does a great job with colors and themes and all of that.
best picture winner: anora
really visually gorgeous and well acted movie but i just still don't know how i feel about it. i think it's probably staying that way unless someone really wants to present me with their opinion.
director whose name starts with the same letter as yours: gravity
directed by alfonso cuarón. not a great movie, but one that tries some things. it's an experience i appreciate, but it doesn't have character depth or really any depth to back it up. what it does well, it does very well. it's got a feeling to it, but the feeling is a generic one.
language you haven’t seen a movie in: the worst person in the world
this movie's in norwegian. it's a bit of a cop-out, as i wanted to watch something in a language i would be less likely to watch on my own, but this is what i ended up with. i'm still so struck with how beautiful the main character is. i think it's just a me thing. i hate men. it's a solid movie though.
doc or concert film: stop making sense
i'm really not that into the talking heads. i appreciate and like them, but i haven't really listened to them on my own. i enjoyed this a lot though, and it was the last movie of the challenge. i was fighting to stay awake but it was not because of the movie. great movie to watch people playing instruments and think about how you could play like that. big fan of how rhythmic david byrne's guitar is.
released in 2025: the phoenician scheme
there are a fair few movies on this list that could fit into this slot but this is the one that took it. saw it at my local theater in the big room and it was a good time. not my favorite wes anderson movie, but i like the direction he's going at the end of it. worth watching if you like that sort of thing, which i do.
based on a non-marvel or dc comic: ghost in the shell (1995)
wow what an awesome movie. beautiful, beautiful animation. raises ethical questions or something but it's also really hot. if you're a girl and you haven't watched this you should fix that.
hand-drawn animation: barber westchester
this movie found a spot in my letterboxd top 4, and i'm not certain that it should be there but it's a very very good movie. the premise is ridiculous and partially important. it's just really nice to watch, and i think pushes the limits of hand-drawn animation. totally indie film, so few people working on it, strongly recommend. art with transfem characters also just means a lot to me.
bipoc director: nickel boys
experiments in an awesome way and succeeds. i would be happy to watch more first-person films if they were approached with this level of consideration. emotionally brutal.
nominated for a razzie: mamma mia
i really struggled with this category because it felt so much more constraining than any other. however, in doing some consideration of my list i realized i had already watched mama mia. it was previously in a later category, so i swapped it. had a fun time watching this.
musical: mama mia 2
worse than the first one. still not awful.
rom com: she's the man
fun movie. you gotta have a few.
a fish appears on screen: election (2005)
this was the category mama mia was originally in. the scene with the fish may be the most impactful of the whole movie, and is a masterful ending. the first half is kinda lackluster but the end is just so good.
and that's it! i watched those movies. allegedly there'll be a party as a result. maybe i'll make a complete movie recap at the end of the year. you should tell me about movies you've watched, and maybe even blog about them.
it’s one
of those summer mornings
you forget about in winter where the
haze isn’t quite bright
golden or
warm and the birds are quietly
determined.
one of those mornings
where you
push yourself to the edge of the bed and
tie your hair back to get it off your neck,
pull on shorts and
socks and walk around
half naked because
no shirt seems quite right
yet, letting the sweat evaporate.
the day lilies are open and if
i had a dog she’d
be surprisingly wet from the dew and
i’d dry her paws with a towel before starting the kettle
for a pot of coffee but
i have to get in my car and go to work
and as i drive
a deer
stands in the middle of the road
jumps over the whole second half
and vanishes
