Marin Poetry Center Writing Retreat
Poem on the Occasion of a Weekly Staff Meeting
Across the deep eternal sky
a thousand changing shapes flit by,
i.e. clouds, or so I have always called them.
But how is it I have never
among my incessant coffee refills
and insectivorous travels
among the cubicles in search
of individual wrapped chocolates
and conversations asked you
if you in my heart detect
several as I do in yours
of the adorable qualities
of broken folding chairs?
Or why we build desired outcomes
on the spots where old ones stood?
I call this meeting to order:
item one let’s go to lunch and order
wild boar. Let’s have an old-world chat
about the original action items.
O fuck the fluting on the donuts!
I feel totally Anglo Saxon!
I want for once in my life to whip
around an actual halberd gleaming
in the sun and win
a great victory versus the air!
Here is my project update:
the file cabinet is watching
over the particles
safely asleep in a beam,
and nothing into our building
has at last so gently crashed
leaving us bored and fortunate.
I move our faces
around this highly polished table
to each other look
almost familiar
so let us slip into the light
blue sleeve this afternoon
so gracefully carries
the next few hours in
and together forget
what our great task is.
Craft: One thing that brings me back to poetry when I feel like I’ve drifted away, is to read a poem first thing in the morning or the last thing at night. Yesterday morning, I opened Matthew Zapruder’s newest book Father’s Day and read this poem. I love the intensity and energy of these lines. The way beauty is a turn, a contrast, a realization that can happen anywhere within life’s mundane and ordinary details.
Prompt: Write a manifesto with all of your might. Tell us what you live and die for.
Step 1) Write a letter of forgiveness to inanimate object.
Step 2) Write a letter about how you failed to be noble.
Step 3) Write a list of things you plan to do between now and sunrise.
Step 4) After these three steps, write the manifesto from scratch in one go.
Journal: You don’t have time to submit this manifesto to a journal. Print it and pin it to your front door.
Recipe: A manifesto deserves something decadent, extreme, and way bigger than appropriate: Salted Chocolate Pudding with Whipped Sour Cream.