Not a thesis poem

This is not a thesis poem. But you asked me to put it up.

SEXY TURKEY YUM YUM

Paltry

I long to slather skin with scented oil,
To rub my fingers in your every
Concealed groove. Your shuffled mortal coil
Awakes my hunger...I'll nibble your knee,
I will engage your breast with seasoned skill
And warm your goose pimples. You must begin
To trust in me: for you I'll only thrill
If you submit to wise caresses. Sin
You shouldn't fear: I come to burn your heart,
To fire your little limbs. I need to stuff
You full with all myself...We will not part;
I'll be your master always. My sweet: tough
Will be your foe tonight. But, since I brined,
It's true: I know you are forever mine.

Justine Bienkowski

"The Dowsing Rod" (the poem formerly known as "Lake House")

Just wanted to put this up for the sake of posterity.


The Dowsing Rod


Your face against my belly reminds me of childhood
and you say, That’s not something I want to equate with sex.

I laugh, thinking, Who else do your fingers touch,
does your tongue get caught in, if not the schoolyard girl

who doesn’t know to cry when pushed down at recess?
You are pressing against the daughter (mother’s spine,

mother’s throat); thumb tracing the brow of a widow
in late age; heat passed into a woman with child

pulsing against the breast. Part of me is already dust,
only the rough shape of memories bumping together

—which is what you pull between your teeth now.
This is the running motion that keeps a hand from holding on

to the arm of a brook, makes it difficult to mourn the site of drowning.
Though you are probably not the bank or the silt or the reeds,

I suddenly think I am the river; and in this dream I want
to know how water looks at itself without drying.

It might happen by becoming an ocean or lake,
the self roaming in self, lost amongst the weeds…

Yet even still water paces on secret legs in an empty house.
You have your travel and I have mine.

Suddenly the blanket shifts, and I wonder how long
we have been asleep. I did not feel your hands, now

fallen out of my hair. If only we lost this cleanly.
But your traces wander below my skin like a net cast out—

you forgot to haul it back in, left the long night filled
with the murmur of water rippling between strings.

A Provincial Life

Inspired by your use of asterisks, I decided to write a poem using them, since for Prof M's class I had to write a "conversation" poem with a refrain.

A Provincial Life

The old house breathed slowly,
       (cracked in the ribs from a night
out drinking and a day spent
       bulldozing)
creaking painfully, aware
it breathed its last.
       (First, its head was chopped
off—a kind of lobotomy, you know—
       then brains scooped out and
belly distended in a sigh).
I hope the house knows that I will miss it,
       (especially the scaffolding).
I will remember your fall from glory
when no one else does.
*
It is a provincial life.
*
How are we so old and
so young
at the same time?
       (Am I not who I once was?
Am I not who I will be?
       I am, I am).
The dirt speaks of eons
       (I speak of a lifetime).
Can I channel Frost?
       (I, too, am a swinger of
birches,
       branches reaching down like
long fingers).
How old is anyone, anyway,
if all our atoms are just
borrowed?
*
It is a provincial life.
*
We set off, a pair of love birds,
off to see other love birds
       (my wings, however, were too
slick with oil
       to fly).
The Bride and Groom looked at each other,
and I, I looked at you
       (well—maybe).
*
It is a provincial life.

Justine Bienkowski

Rondeau

Yours

Were I not yours, do you believe
You would have indulged me? The trees
Seem to agree, waving their
Bracken arms above their heads; they’re
Sure I am just abandoned leaves.

I fear abandonment, conceive
Your boredom echoing clear, achieve
A quick heart. Would you think me fair
        Were I not yours?

Stretching and moaning, we the trees
Concede our doubt, our falling leaves
Will prove to you concern for tears
In bone and thought. Are we a pair?
        Were I not yours?

Justine Bienkowksi

Lake House (draft 2 or 3)

I've been trying to write more personal narratives and I'm so ready to run away from it. I feel like the ant and the kid that burns ants with a magnifying glass. I don't know whether this new approach to writing is terrible or even worth pursuing. I kind of hope it's not, because it's hard. Then again, that might be the only reason this is worth pursuing. P.S. This is written in couplets, though some of the lines are too long and fold over in this post.


Lake House


One time when your face hid against my belly you made me
think me of childhood. You said, That’s not something I want you

to associate with our sex. But I thought, When you touch me,
don’t you touch it all at once?—

the schoolyard girl that doesn’t know to cry when pushed
down on the gravel at recess. The ripe youth that opens

like a laugh, a spreading skirt (startle of the apple’s white skin
as a blade undresses crimson). Even the wife, the mother with child

pulsing against the breast—and, if I make it, the slow rot of old age.
No, you probably are not the banks or the silt or the reeds,

but suddenly I think I am the river.
And in this dream I want to know how water can look at itself

without drying up. Sometimes, by becoming an ocean or a lake.
But let me tell you something about water with no place to go:

it makes the same motion I do, pacing across floorboards in an empty house.
You have your travel and I have mine.

At the end of this, perhaps you will have found
something and I will have lost. Or maybe

I will gain your fingerprints under my skin, pile them up
in a heap that doesn’t sink or burn—all your traces trapping

me like a net thrown into water that no one remembered
to pull back in.

The Remnants (draft 3 or something)

The Remnants


This is the body in bed that has always been the body in bed.
This is the restless animal of love.

*

Each time you bury your face in him, say,
I can’t stay until tomorrow. Soon, it becomes years of him
carrying you up steps, nose nestled in the crook of a neck,
his pulse on the far shore bumping against your lips.

*

Nights, we make the long prayer of love—
for fear of heaven, for fear of the body’s flight.

*

Remember when you were young and didn’t know
what the word men meant? You thought it was like
two gears grinding against each other,
the coat of grease smeared across your legs.

*

—Darling, I have heard your secret sounds repeated
in other mouths, but nobody, nobody makes your silence.

*

Now you say, I want to get this history out of my body,
say, Please let us leave this Pantheon of loss.
He tells you, This is the last time we are young before we die.
You say, We will never burn to the bottom of this wick.

*

We return to the days when gods were nothing to fight
against and wonder: What is this soft beast against the veins?

*

You were rough with your virginity, like it was a scrape
of the knee, or sudden afterthought. And now your mother
is saying, You dumb, fool girl. God gave us nothing
if He gave us only the power to say Yes.

*

She has wrapped up in her the thick cord of belief,
strong like a tendon, a fistful of hair.

*

This time on your knees you say, Mother,
fold me up again like a paper crane, put me in a pocket
on your body. I don’t want to walk these treacherous lands,
and if only my feet don’t touch the ground—

*

We have learned all the ways to love,
but no one once taught us how to stop.

Ars Poetica

Sweaters

I spend my time threading needles,
Reluctant to put thread to cloth,
Dragging string through tender eyes
But abandoning each in the leaves of pages.

The weather’s eyes turn colder, now,
Misting my days with chilled rain
And darkened clouds. Thunderheads
Grace my vision, threatening to spill

Over, like cups overflowing, not just
Half empty or half full. Her shuffling feet
Crunch leaves beneath the breath of fall,
Sprinkling dead oak bodies into cement cracks.

I pick dead leaves up and thread them
On my needles, collecting dead thoughts
For holey sweaters. I leave my needles
On shelves and in cars: lingering, stagnant ideas.

I’ll write in the sky with my embroidery thread,
Signal my dreams to birds, try to knit sweaters
To keep fingers and pens warm. Blessed
Projects, lost in brain waves, lost to paper leaves.

Justine Bienkowski

"What Happens Regardless" (Draft 2)

Some beauty cannot help itself.
      Like the brewing storm that shakes
the house with both hands,
the clumsy mammoth strength that Lennie had—
accident cracking the lintel.
      Or the splendor of a girl’s face—
the one who sits in the heart of the boy you love:
so undeniable that it speeds your own pulse.
      As when my mother walks
through the rose garden,
noon lighting behind each petal.
The softness of her body hardens in old age,
bones erupt from their stations like children
restless from a long drive.
Someone asks her to move
so the light may better fall on the flowers.
     Later, she sees the pictures:
Cajun Moon, Maiden’s Blush, Princess of Wales.
Aren’t they beautiful, someone says.
And what can she say?
What can anyone do, trapped in the thinning
summer night, besides look hard at the veins
on every flower and admit:
Yes.
      Yes.
           Yes.

"What Happens Regardless" (Draft 1)

Dear Justine,
I don't really need comments on this draft specifically--I just wanted to put up the first draft of this poem for the sake of posterity. If there are certain areas that you favor in this draft over the second draft, please let me know. Otherwise, this is just here to document the progression in revision. Also, this poem had not been titled when I wrote this draft, but I'm giving it the title that I gave my later draft.


In a hurricane the roof is first to go,
lifting up and away like a sudden bright idea,
tremulous moment of inspiration.
The wind has itched its way under the eaves,
And soon the mirrors will be sand in the air.
Still, the brewing
The storm cannot help its terrible beauty.
As when my mother walks through the rose garden,
The noon lighting behind each petal.
The softness of her body hardens in old age,
bones erupting from their stations like children
restless from a long drive.
Someone asks her to move so the light
may better fall on the roses, and she does.
Afterwards, my father shows her the pictures:
Cajun Moon, Maiden’s Blush, Princess of Wales.
Aren’t they beautiful, he asks.
And what can she say? What else can she do, besides
Look straight at each vein on the petals and say,
Yes, yes they are beautiful.

This is not thesis-related poetry

But I'm still posting it anyway because I just wrote it. I feel guilty for writing it. And I need someone to tell me that life is okay.

Both Easy and Difficult

You see, there (yes, there) your desk once stood.
And there, maybe in that dusty corner,
A forgotten guitar had lain.
You see, there, your easel and paint brushes.
And maybe, there, your pillow once rested,
Your face pressed tight into it,
Tight just like the night you slept on the couch,
On the eve of your leaving.

It is not that I miss you,
Because I cannot forget your words,
But on nights like this,
When the cold creeps into the bed
And my toes freeze,
I cannot help but remember a time
When life made sense in little moments.

It is not that I still love you,
But that on dark nights I guess I do forget.

You see, I am still finding symbols of your leaving me,
A sock here and there,
And even though I've moved it all to the closet,
I still find souvenirs of a different time.
How do you remove someone from your life?

I cannot help but remember a time before your craze,
Before the tears you made,
When things were stable and I had a home.

I do not love you.
I do not miss you.
I miss a ghost that does not exist,
A remembrance of "always" and promises
That dissipates between fingers
Like the burning of a cigarette.

Justine Bienkowski

Tell me I'm not a horrible person for writing this. I feel achey tonight in my heart area.

Cicadas (draft 1)

Dear Amy, This is one of those poems that I've been trying to write for days/months/years and don't feel as if I'll ever really be able to finish. I made a lot of headway tonight, though. Please tell me what you think.

Cicadas

Everything always seems to necessarily
Return to cicadas in my life,
Even now, even tonight,
I cannot remember silence or calm.
Even left to the cold recesses of my mind,
I am consumed by chirping.

What is it to be consumed?
A body left desirous?
A trembling lung?
An innocuous cough?
Consumption, consumption.

There is an ache that rests low,
Low in the soul but in the chest,
Ice hot and swelling,
A rough boulder in a dry throat,
Do people die from this?

I feel as if I might die,
Tonight, again,
Because again, tonight
I have to hear the tremble
In my mother's voice.
And tonight, again,
I must retreat into a solemn nest.

I must content myself with cicadas,
Not knowing any other way,
Not sure what two hands
Or two hearts,
Or four,
Mean anymore.

How many years have I listened to cicadas,
The soundtrack to my life,
Amongst a slurry mix of weeping?
An echo from corner to corner,
From room to room,
Inescapable.
How many more years will cicadas come?

Justine Bienkowski

Birds (Draft 2)

Birds

I.
There is a bird in my throat that hurts--
small swallow with a tender belly.
Its beak opens as a prelude
to the warble that does not come.
There is no song     there is barely escape.


II.
Tell me about the field beyond the house,
how geese hide in the tall grass before
we wake. At dawn I am drying a plate
when I see them pull hollow bones
together and out      past the grove of beech trees.
      One day the ground may burn,
our bed and books cinder before that fire,
and the geese all flown to safety—
another field of grass, another grove of trees.


III.
You came into me with a mess
of feathers and squall,
amazed as a bird with a foot in the trap.
Music in your sleeping chest,
dark in the August night—
hard like a bird in the window, glass streaked
with blood, traces of the wrong way in:
the sound grows until the room is filled
with this screeching,
this deafening shroud of birds.


IV.
I take the dying sparrow,
definition molting in my hands,
feathers bound by muscle and bone.
Here, the broken line of wing
      —here, a running song
still sweet in the throat.
Oh, southward migration       knowledge
of the poles       years flown through leaves
and nights sheltered against gale winds.

Alfa Art Gallery Poem, Draft 1

Here's my poem for Alfa. Also including a picture of the work for better reference.




Desert, Desert, Dessert

The rain drips down,
Moping, as rain typically does,
Curling its fingers lovingly around
Strands of silver cloud hair,
Drifting into blankets of tender fog,
Laying down little raindrop heads
No larger than the eyes of needles.

The rain slips her curvy bodies
Down thin reeds and into
The mouths of skulls,
Licking away the day's dust,
Licking away the day.

The shift comes softly,
Stealing through the night
On what seems like
The tiny padded feet of kittens.
It is gradual, the way in which she appears,
The way in which such things occur.

Gone are days when grayness was bemoaned.
Instead, exult! Rejoice!
Jubilation resonates within bodies,
Slowly drawing open lips for rest.

A cheeky temptress,
She slithers down backs and
Brushes cheeks with her nose.

Eyes closed, listening through windows
And roof beats
It is hard to discern whether it is not simply
Radio static,
Perhaps sand falling through an hourglass,
Or maybe pebbles falling from an open hand.

Exult, rejoice!
The crowns of green lift up,
Jubilant, jubilant, jubilant.

All at once it is night,
Pulsing, hot night,
Full of slick, vibrating air.
All at once the rain falls hard,
Beating into pavement
Along with the beat of hearts.
A drum, a drum,
The rain melts sugary bodies,
Melts holes into sand.

All at once--quiet.
All at once--rain.

Alfa Art Gallery poem (Draft 4)

Separation

Titian felt the old yearning in his bones—
the need that hurtles a cliff face into sea,
a song so sweet that stone erodes to sand.
           Someone drew the first line
and called it separation,
carved out the shape of man but forgot
about the impossibility of entry.

Maybe this is the ancient and familiar longing
that drives man to define the world,
to name each thing he touches—
the spoken separation giving him
a word to cry into the night when lines
begin to overtake him.

And when the call and echo is not enough,
doesn’t that man set out into a world
that is not a world—into a landscape colored
by the hues of his loose dreaming?
The nature around him that wants only to be
with itself is filled by his calling—
each unfirm aspect is lit by his need
for the far shore and soft step.
The warp and weft of the land
reshaped to fit his desire.

These mountains could hide Shangri La.
They could be a woman soft with sleep—
the neck at least, the veins another landscape.

Alfa Art Gallery poem (Draft 1)

These mountains could hide Shangri La.
They could be a woman soft with sleep—
the neck at least, the veins another landscape.
One day, a traveler, just beginning,
finds the sea and sky tangled in such bliss
that they cannot bear to lift apart,
to create a horizon from the separation of their bodies.
What else, besides need can drive a man out into
a world that is not a world,
if not the hues and loose dreaming,
if not the far shore and soft step?
What else can cause him to cut a line across the ocean,
fill each brief outline of nature,
each ripple and stone, lighting it all
with this ancient and familiar longing.

Ghazal

Here's the ghazal I wrote over the summer that I was telling you about.

Unrequited Ghazal

The bumbles buzz, the sea is boiling blue
With anger brewed, but I, I'll wait for you.

By sandy ruins, holes dug deep, askew
In clay, pressed tight in palms. I'll wait for you.

By dunes, burying myself alone, chew
Some grit between my teeth. I'll wait for you.

By stormy waves, as Plath I'll walk into
The sea, too far to breath. I'll wait for you.

By sunken ships, and losing rosy hues
I'll tumble down to dark. I'll wait for you.

Justine Bienkowski



From wikipedia, here's a bit about the form:

"# A ghazal is composed of five or more couplets.
# The second line of each couplet (or sher) in a ghazal usually ends with the repetition of a refrain of one or a few words, known as a radif, preceded by a rhyme known as the qaafiyaa. In Arabic, Persian and Turkic the couplet is termed a bayt and the line within the bayt is called a misra. In the first couplet, both lines end in the rhyme and refrain so that the ghazal's rhyme scheme is AA BA CA etc.
# There can be no enjambement across the couplets in a strict ghazal; each couplet must be a complete sentence (or several sentences) in itself.
# All the couplets, and each line of each couplet, must share the same meter."

"The ghazal not only has a specific form, but traditionally deals with just one subject: Love. And not any kind of love, but specifically, an illicit and unattainable love."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghazal

Sprung

Sprung

From flaming breath does autumn spring,
From nervous steps, a run: she falls
From trees and sows herself in hearts.

From roots to stems, from valves to blood,
From soft impossibility.
From palms to grasps, she sings her spell:

From wings that play the windy nights,
From cracks in doors she saunters in,
From shadows, from warmth: such pause, now.

From autumn springs a time too slow,
From autumn springs a winter's bellow,
From autumn springs a fever. Also

From autumn: possibility.


I had to write using anaphora for Professor Miller's class. I find it really weird how having to do that took my typical writing style i.e., straight-forward is the game, and changed it into what-the-fuck-is-going-on. I'm not making sense anymore. Help.

Jibe-Ho!

Jibe-Ho!

There is something to be said
For capsizing,
For touching white crests
Which mirror white breasts of gulls.

There is something which pulls
Me into darkened waves,
Into ice peaks and mouthy
Fish souls.

A deep rush down deep lungs,
I dive into Time's ocean,
Confusing what was with what is and
what will be with what was.

To leave my boat behind,
A woeful wreck on jagged rock,
To float into a throne of shells,
I do not find something so wrong with that.

Goodbye, dear hull.
Goodbye, dear jib.
Goodbye, dear rudder.
I will remember your sleekness,

Even as I drift tugged by waves
And whales.
To travel the gulf stream cannot
Be so bad...

There is something to be said
For capsizing,
But more to be said for
Release.



This is one of the poems that I wrote over this summer. One of my main concerns is I am unsure whether it fits into my thesis. I mean, of course I can extrapolate, but I just wanted to see what your sense was. Do you think that it shows the formation of an identity (and simultaneous the destruction of an identity)?

The Strangler Fig (draft 1)

The Strangler Fig*

It begins almost like love: a seed
shaken off into some dark root,
growth without the realization of growth.
To the elm, it is just another dark
aspect of forest alighting on the body—
the first tendril like wind, or a soft

trail of rain still sliding. Need opens the coat softly,
and still the tree barely feels the seed,
the hungry intentions of such a small, pale body.
The white foot, the thin root,
scrapes the flank of elm. In darkness,
legs begin to lengthen—growth

over the mottled bark, growth
into the wet soil, the entry like a moan, a soft
bed, returning home beneath a darkening
sky. How is it that this seed
already holds the leaf and root,
the fever of living wound tight in its body

—the body
that will topple an elm, despite the long growth,
despite the many rings and branching roots?
It must be love that lets the vine tug, soft
against the taproot—at least the seed
of longing that allows this twining in the dark.

Even if desire is not the word, the dark
ground will still hold the elm in place: a body
trembling at its tips, forced to feel a seed
unravel itself in some peripheral crook, the growth
of vines climbing the trunk, softly
asking favors. Would the tree run, if not for the roots

sunk deep into ground, the tripping roots
that once gave life? Vines arch darkly,
latticed across a torso of elm. Soon the bark softens,
as if relenting to a terrible love. The body
seems to creak and kneel as it dies, though the growth
of vines holds up the original shape. Most seeds

begin in this quiet way—the host body
not knowing what the growth
of love can do, barely even feeling the seed.


*"...The roots [of a strangler fig] grow down to the forest floor where they take root and begin to take nutrients from the soil. Gradually the roots wrap around the host tree, widen, and slowly form a lattice-work that surround the host's trunk. The fig's crown grows foliage which soon overshadows the tree. Eventually, the host tree dies leaving the fig with a hollow trunk-which is easily climbed thanks to the many openings in the trunk." (source)

Other notes: my friend Genna has a great tattoo of a strangler fig on her calf, which is where I got the idea for this poem. This is the first time I have ever voluntarily written a sestina (albeit a cheating sestina), and there was a lot less bloodshed involved than I remember.

Specific concerns: I'm not sure how clear the scenario is to someone who doesn't know what a strangler fig is. If there are any particular points of confusion or ambiguity, please--anyone--point them out.

Welcome!

Welcome to any and all (mostly probably just you and me, Amy).

This is the first post of the "Deconstructing and Reconstructing Verse" blog, where Amy Meng and I (Justine Bienkowski) will be collaborating on a year-long writing project.

The two of us are both writing honors thesis papers this year, and have decided to use this blog as one way to combine forces and support each other in our quest.

You will find posts with drafts, with completed poems, revisions, writing exercises, probably a lot of discussion about graduate schools and MFA programs.

This blog will serve mainly as a support group to push each other and make sure that we churn out the best work possible.

Can't wait!

xoxo

Justine