My year in sem,
I doodled Mrs. ____ on lined pages
that should have held notes:
Torah, Love, Art, Marriage,
big words that camped out
on my forehead, crinkled it up,
with their heavy gear.
If I couldn't fill the blank at the centre,
how could I even spell those words?
Would they, could they, ever be mine?
My friends and I spent the year
secluded from boys
but we thought of the opposite Sex, often,
and contemplated that word's mysterious meaning.
My first semester at Stern
I decided not to Date, I'd wait
another year, I thought
it was a good plan, at first
I lost my self, my mind,
a little then a lot
to papers I didn't know how to write,
words I couldn't decipher or define,
a schedule that ran faster than I could.
I couldn't sustain a sense of being
my best Self.
My friends and I wondered, nineteen years old,
if we'd push Dating forever,
whether we'd ever or never get Married all.
Moments (months) later, Steven sprung into my Life.
Hearing his name was a New Years Eve miracle,
the answer to my question:
"If you find any rich Chabad guys,
be sure to let me know!"
It was a joke,
the way everything in my Life just is.
I wasn't really looking,
really wasn't looking
and his eyes focused in on Career, Education.
All this and yet, from the moment we met,
the rest of our Lives were each other's --
even if we didn't quite know it.
Second semester, at Stern once again,
was supposed to be zen
to follow up what I thought
had been singular first semester stress:
two, three Lit. classes with professors who cared,
would diminish the feeling that I was ensnared.
Instead I was whisked into Dating,
makeup-wearing on the daily,
looking into the days and Years Ahead,
to see if I could see
him in mine, me in his.
We jumped right in
to household labor division and how many kids
on date number two. By date nine,
I sort of Proposed, he sort of said yes.
By the middle of my "zen" semester,
I was Engaged
in my first Relationship, complete
with Wedding plans and a mother-in-law-to-be.
Those three Lit. classes turned into one.
I remember:
Phone conversations with my mom
about Wedding dates and halls and rings
over spicy mayo drenched avocado rolls in the caf.
Two distracted, forehead head to desk hours,
at a library carrel over half-written, crumpled lined pages:
a Poem due Thursday in Women & Lit.
Too many trips to Kleinfeld's and David's Bridal
accompanied by friends and a tight deadline
to find The Dress.
There were also visits to the Moma and the Met
and every Starbucks in the city
with my favourite boy,
the one I didn't know four months ago.
On our Wedding Day,
I ate one to-go cup of oatmeal and drank half an iced coffee
and after I brushed my teeth at 11:00 AM,
I didn't eat till supper -- I feared bad breath.
My wedding planner zipped and buttoned
me into my overflowing Dress --
our album lies and says my mother did
(she posed and poised her manicured fingers,
the photographer's request.)
At our Ceremony, I cried an ugly happy cry,
relieved: my thick veil let me hide.
Can I ask this next Verse to contain
the year and a half of Marriage
that takes us to today?
The way our six hundred square feet
covered in dark brown hardwood floor,
hold us, keep us close, start our fights and push
us back together again.
Can every Word, each of these letters
tell you a Love Story, a short Poem?
The way the dried roses in vases,
hanging on the bedroom wall,
cut at the head and plopped into a crystal bowl,
whisper about our fourth Date, first Valentine's day,
six month anniversary, One Year Anniversary
and that random Tuesday that brought home a dozen.
I love the story you told in this poem, and how personall it felt to me. The images in this poem are impeccable. One of my favorite is the " dried roses in vases,
ReplyDeletehanging on the bedroom wall,
cut at the head and plopped into a crystal bowl". The last stanza in general is my favorite. Well done! I loved reading this poem.
This is so real and so applicable to so many people! Thank you!
ReplyDeleteYou have a great way of describing these events to be memorable and meaningful for others. Your specific details also made the events seem more real- like avocado in the caf.
The most real moment for me was: "We jumped right in
to household labor division and how many kids
on date number two. By date nine,
I sort of proposed, he sort of said yes."
One small critique is to avoid the rhyme that you had with the words "bride" and "cried." It seemed a little forced and child-like.
Great job!!!
In this new poem, you explore a somewhat different formal approach. You use your most prose-like lines yet in poetic form. Sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn't.
ReplyDeleteTo me parts of this are too close to "prose with line breaks" to justify the lines themselves. I did enjoy reading it as prose. I also trusted the honesty of the voice, and I felt a real person forming in my mind as I read it. These are attractive qualities.
If it were me, I would experiment with putting some of this (back?) into prose, retaining line breaks for only the most poetic parts. In general, your shorter lines are more poetic, and your longer ones less so. Why not alternate back and forth between prose and poetry in a single work? Or at least experiment with it? It could be interesting.
There was one part where I didn't trust the speaker, because the description seemed to far from reality. I don't feel this part is working, because it is a physically impossible event, but the speaker seems to think it is possible (if highly unlikely):
like a match that hits a striker as it fall off a table
and it ignites, mid-flight -- what are the odds of that?
For a match to light, it would require far more pressure than its own weight could provide.
You also might not want to end with the images of roses, since it is such a conventional symbol for love.