The poem, located here, exposes the reader to the author’s quest to make sense of his world and, within it, the concept of faith. At first, Faith is shown as something that cannot be affected by the logic aimed at it. The actual text of the poem builds itself slowly, using each word from previous sentences to formulate new ideas. As the original letters shift, space themselves differently, and change in meaning, the poem develops right before the readers’ eyes, much the same as an argument or a thought process might slowly grow within the mind. It’s a very organic process, and the reader is presented with a slowly appearing train of reasoning, not merely a wall of text to interpret as a simultaneously-created whole.

The author writes of striding out of his or her mind, while the reader is invited to actually view within it. The author has departed from the realm of ‘usual sense’ and chosen to go ‘around the bend,’ leaving behind the poem as a directive to others, demanding that they Leap. The poem then collapses into a heap of words, leaving the reader with only, “Faith.”

I highly recommend checking it out. The music is optional, but I recommend it, because it parallels the text very well. As the words appear on various levels, the pitch of the music changes accordingly; the meaning of the text is reflected in the shape of the words, and on the whole the piece is cohesive, combining a number of senses in a way that simply isn’t possible in standard printed poetry.

Another student has written a blog entry about Faith and I recommend reading it as well, here. It really nicely describes the poem in full detail, but you absolutely must read th–no, not read. Experience. The poem in full to fully appreciate it. Go forth and multimedia!

I tried to convey someone dying.

Leah Yegneswaran

The phone rings. Sarah groans and turns over, jamming the pillow over her head. The machine picks up, her own voice ringing out tinnily in the small apartment. The machine clicks off once again without anyone leaving a message. She mumbles something about stupid prank calling kids, and the phone starts to ring again. Finally, she gets up, stumbles into the kitchen and seizes the phone off the wall. “Hello?” She tries to say, but it comes out as a garbled, groggy mess. She coughs, scrubbing a hand over her face. Someone on the other end of the line is screeching in a high-pitched, too-fast voice. “Hello?” She tries again, louder this time. “Who the hell is this?”

“It’s Janet, it’s Janet—“

“Janet? What do you want?” She’s confused, befuddled. Her sister knows better than to call this late. Sarah has work early, Janet knows all about her new position at the hospital and how close she is to promotion, she wouldn’t bother Sarah in the middle of the night.

“No—I’m not—this is Dawn. Janet’s in the hospital. Sarah, Sarah, she got hit by a car. She’s not going to make it.”

Sarah’s world slams to a halt.

“Please come.”

She nods dumbly, her voice locked away somewhere deep and icy in her chest, each breath a thousand needles of pain.

“Sarah, hurry.”

She hangs up. She stares at the phone in her hand for a long second before turning and letting the thing crash to the floor as she bolts to her room. She nearly breaks her neck trying to get into her jeans too fast, but then finally, she’s out the door in mismatched socks, a scarf half wound around her neck, open coat flapping half on and half off. She guns the engine aggressively, cursing the light, pre-dawn traffic. Every inch of her is laced with hatred, anger. If it weren’t, she’d be full of crystals of pain, of despair, and so she fumes instead, roaring swearwords at the pigeons that peck at the sidewalk.

The hospital is as green and antiseptic as a bottle of hotel mouthwash. She hates it immediately and passionately.

Her sister is swathed in a hospital blanket, bandages, a neck brace. There’s barely two inches of skin visible at a time under all the trappings and what Sarah can see is purple-bruised and pulpy, like fruit dropped one too many times.

“Janet?” She reaches out, not sure where to put her hand. Not sure her sister could feel her touch, or if she did, if it would bring nothing more than pain. “Janet, baby, can you hear me?”

Dawn is there, sitting in a corner with her knees pulled up to her chest and her arms crossed tight. Sarah has never been close to her sister’s roommate, and the sight of her here now distresses her.

“Could you… could you give me a minute?”

The girl nods, her eyes red and swollen, and swallows with a noise like a frog. “I’ll get you some coffee.”

“No—that’s not…” Sarah shakes her head. “Thanks, but no.”

The girl just nods, unfolding herself from the chair and fleeing. Sarah takes the chair from the corner, lifting it carefully and placing it by Janet’s bed. She doesn’t want to drag the legs over the tile; the noise is already too full of sounce: the whoosh of the respirator, the beep of the cardiac monitor, the steady dripping of the IV tubes that pierce Janet’s bed, pinning her to the bed. It’s like watching someone crucified, slowly choking away on their own body weight. Sarah can see how Janet’s pressed against the bed, how there’s nothing of her sister’s soul left inside this hollow shell. Nothing filling up the flesh anymore.

“Janet, baby. It’s ok. It’s ok, you’re going home. I’m so… I’m so sorry. But… you’re going to be alright now. I promise.”

She smiles sadly, reaching forward to lightly brush her sister’s cheek with two fingers.

“You’re going to be alright.”

She takes a steely breath, reaches over, and switches off the respirator, silencing the alarm with an easy twist of her trained fingers.

Janet blinks, the motion tiny and fragile, and that’s all it takes.

Sarah doesn’t cry. She doesn’t know how.

With this prompt I want to show what goes through the mind of a man having an affair.

***

“We have to talk,” says the voice on the phone, and he hisses.

“Shut up. You can’t call this number, you know that. I’ll call you from the office.”

He hangs up, and his wife calls from the office. “Who was that?”

“Telemarketer, hon.” He heads back to the bedroom, kicking his daughter’s stuffed duck out of the way as he goes. He’s really sick of being married. He wasn’t signing up for all this when he said his vows. He dropped back onto his bed and looked up at the ceiling. The girlfriend thing had happened accidentally. He’d met her at a bar, of course, and one drink had led to another until they were tangled up together at a hotel that he—thank god—didn’t have to explain to his wife because she’d already decided that they should keep their credit cards separate. He wanted to keep a lot more separate than that. He misses having his own place, being able to have his drinking buddies over. He misses being single. He groans, digging his hands into the pillows. The bed is too soft. His wife chose it, just like she chose the drapes and the furniture, the plates in the kitchen and even their kid’s name for God’s sake. His girlfriend let him choose things: the time, the place of their meeting, what they talked about, where they had sex. Sometimes he’d take her out for hella expensive dinners and sometimes, they’d just do the local diner, talk for a while and then go their separate ways. It was nice, having a friend who wasn’t Mary’s. She’d scared off most of his beer buddies with her frilly cocktail parties and shrill associates. She was well into scaring off Paul as well.

His job was pretty rough, selling insurance scams to people who couldn’t afford them. Coming home to a screaming three year old and an exhausted wife who wants her feet rubbed doesn’t really help. His girlfriend doesn’t ever want her feet rubbed. So it’s weird that she’s calling him at home—he told her not to when he first handed over his business card. They’ve talked on the office line, so he’s worried. Something must be wrong.

He can’t call her back until tomorrow, so he just lies there and sweats. What if she wants to break it off? He’ll be stuck in this domestic nightmare without any kind of distraction. What if she’s going to tell his wife? Then he’ll be stuck in a nightmare of an entirely different kind. He could probably find someone else to take his mind off things, but that would be a real pain in the ass to add to the list of already annoying things he’s going through. He’s not a fan of whatever ideas his brain spits out, and he stares at his phone, wanting to ring her back right away. But his wife digs through his phone plenty, taking pictures, playing tetris, fooling around. No reason to ruin it now.

He just has to wait it out until tomorrow. Just a few hours.

Leah Yegneswaran

Leah Yegneswaran

Prompt: Make use of prompt/trigger line for easy freewrite. “There was something about the way he…”

With this prompt I wanted to remember a fallen friend. Easy enough since he’s all I can think about recently.

There was something about the way he would lay his hands on someone and know immediately what was bothering them. He would touch their shoulder and feel their tension, feel the stress from school or the argument they’d just had with their parents. He had cool, steady fingers and a butterfly tattoo stamped right over the muscles of his forearm and he knew just when to prod, where to push, and when to gentle away the fears and tears. Being with Bill was an adventure and a learning process. He was the kind of guy who would take me for lunch at a diner or a two hour motorcycle jaunt before swinging by his house and showing me his pistols, named for Norse gods, or the paintings he’d collected and hung up in the small townhouse. One of them had cracked during the earthquake, but it was still beautiful. Bill. His name was William Thomas, but to us he was Bill—to me he was ‘campus Dad,’ though that was a thought I kept in my head most of the time. There was something about him. About his hands and those bright sky-eyes. Something about the way he could look right at you, right through you and know just what to say or what not to say. He wore kilts, and not just on the weekends. To work. Kilts and Hawaiian shirts. When I went to his funeral, he was wearing a kilt and I nearly cried from relief. I was so worried they’d put him in something wrong, truss him up to look like the person he wasn’t. The person I remember had healing hands and a big, warm heart. He gave bear hugs and rubbed away the pain. He sat there and listened when I laughed about my ‘conquests’ or just watched on calmly while I stirred and jabbed at my coffee or tea with a scowl on my face. You know, I don’t think I ever saw him grumpy. My dad reminds me of Bill, Bill reminds me my dad. They’re both mountain people. They run deep. They have roots. They’re very quiet, calm, old. They are? I’m stuck in present tense. I keep forgetting that he’s died—sorry, that he’s “passed away,” that he’s “moved on” to a better place. Forget that. That’s not what happened. He was taken from us. I have tried to convince myself that he’s moved on to something bigger and better and brighter. That he has upgraded, after a fashion, but I don’t feel in my heart of hearts that’s true. I can feel that I miss him. At least, I think I do. I don’t quite trust my emotions, or my memories, or my mind. I’m so freaking changeable. I want to remember that at this moment, during these few weeks, my heart hurt and I clutched at a gap in the sky. Right now, this instance, I don’t want the worldspace to fold around where Bill used to be. I’m not ready to bury him yet. I’m not ready to let the world forget him. I’m not ready to let myself do that, either.

“I had a dream last night, about you of all people. I know we said we were over, and I know we said we could be friends but I don’t think that I’m ready for that. I don’t think I was ready to let you go. Maybe screwing around with you was a mistake in the first place but I wish we didn’t have to stop. It’s not like your wife would have cared anyways, not with all the time she spends with—what is his name, anyways. That banker, that’s always taking her out for fancy dinners. Carlos, or Carlton. Something stupid like that. Anyways, in the dream, you and I were walking along the beach just like before, but instead of shells the whole thing was littered with bones. Little ones, and brightly coloured like sea glass. You kept telling me that you’d make me a necklace from them and I didn’t believe you. You always said weird shit like that, you said you’d pull down the moon for me and look what we have instead. A few credit card bills from random motels and a lot of unanswered telephone calls. Actually, I’m pretty sure you’ve still got some of my underwear. I wouldn’t mind if you gave that back. You can keep it if you really want to, though, but your wife might have a problem with that. I don’t think she’d have a problem with you screwing around, but if you’re saving mementos then she might think you’re getting attached and if you divorce her for some other woman, she’ll be poor again and then she might mind the affairs. As long as you keep her rich, she probably wouldn’t care what we did, or where. We could probably get together in her fucking living room and she’d just keep screwing Carl in the pool house. Oh, Paul. That was his name, Paul. He works over by the deli where I met you for the first time. That deli was in my dream too. We were sitting inside and the ceiling fan was broken and you were trying to convince me to try your boardwalk fries, even though they were covered in mayonnaise and I hate mayonnaise. It’s disgusting, but in the dream everything tasted better than it does in real life, and we were both happier than I think we’ve ever been. And I guess what I’m saying is that I miss you. And I know this is a hell of a voice mail to leave you , especially since the last time I left you a message this long it was me chewing you out for letting your dog chew up my Louboutins, and really, I’m sorry that I called you a dickless windbag, but those shoes were expensive. Anyways. I think you should call me back when you get this, because I’m not done with you, Gerald. I’m not done screwing you, and I’m not done being angry with you and I’m certainly not ready to be friends with you and make doe eyes at your wife like I never fucked you in the backseat of your Mercedes. I hate your car, by the way. But I think I love you. So, call me back, I guess.”

1. Time to rant, rave, and foam at the mouth: the piece of mind you would like to give that old so-and-so.

With this prompt, I decided to rant at an old roommate of mine, someone I was friends with for 8 years before realizing that she was stealing money from me and trashing me to all our friends. Our friendship, needless to say, went rather sour after that, but it had been a long time coming.

Sometimes I look at pictures like this, and I wonder what happened to us. Sometimes I can’t remember why we were ever friends–and sometimes I can’t figure out why the hell we’re not now. If we’re not now. We don’t seem to be friends, now, and we didn’t seem to be friends during some of the time that we WERE friends. You said we had a love-hate relationship, and that confused me, because really, I only loved you. I never hated you, but at the same time, sometimes I felt like you didn’t love me. Didn’t even like me. Didn’t need me, didn’t want me. You said you’d be perfectly fine without anyone else, that you didn’t need people. But I needed you to need me. I needed you to like me, and to love me, because for years and years and years, I needed you, and I liked you, and I loved you. And it felt one sided, sometimes, and sometimes I cried because I wasn’t sure that you cared at all, and after nearly a decade of friendship, I thought that I should be able to say, confidently, YES, she loves me. But I couldn’t say that, because I couldn’t feel it. Where I needed warmth and reassurance, I only felt cold, stony, silence. For whatever reason–maybe you loved me but couldn’t express it. Maybe you didn’t love me at all. Maybe you didn’t think it was important to let me know that you gave a damn. Maybe you really thought that I was a bitch who didn’t deserve your time and affection. Maybe you had no time to give, maybe you had no affection for me, maybe you had fond thoughts and memories and didn’t know how to say, We were friends but now we’re not. But for whatever reason, when I reached out to you, I didn’t feel you reaching back. I didn’t feel that you cared if I stayed or went, if I talked to you or never spoke again. I felt like an intruder in your life. In your busy schedule. And you were my best friend: I made time for you. I carved a place for you in my heart, I gave you the key to my home. I did my very best to make you feel welcome, and loved, and supported. And I didn’t feel that back, not at the end of things. I did–when we were kids. I did, when we were growing up. But when we were adults, when we were young college students, heading off into the unknown, I didn’t feel it anymore. I got you into college. I did everything in my power to earn your love. I tried my best. But I got tired of trying. I got tired of spending time and money and effort, I got tired of crying when no matter what I did, you treated me coldly, as if you didn’t give a damn. I was exhausted. I was spent. And I stopped trying, and all I felt was the same silence. As if it made no difference to you, to the world, whether I was trying, or not–the result was the same. Whether I tried to hold desperately onto our friendship or whether I let go, I never felt like you cherished me. I never felt like you missed me. I never felt like you loved me. And that makes me so terribly sad. I miss the girl that I was friends with when we were little. The girl who loved me. I don’t know where she went. But the woman that you grew into, one who wasn’t warm to me, one who didn’t tell me, show me, act like she loved me. I don’t miss her. Which means, my dear, that I don’t miss you. I miss who you used to be for me, to me, with me. But you aren’t that person to me anymore. I don’t think you ever will be again. Thank you for being there, years ago–but I don’t need you anymore. I don’t want you. And I don’t love you.

What words suffice my total summary?

My greatest question lingers unfulfilled.

I stand upon the brink, a child unskilled:

Unsuited for the future that I see.

How shall I be recalled when I am killed?

I find less pleasure now where once I thrilled

To idle time away; instead of glee,

My greatest question lingers, unfulfilled.

My mind is trapped by fears: fences I build,

And I am trapped by my own carpentry.

How shall I be recalled when I am killed?

Though of the sweetest dreams my head was filled,

They all have fled, and I am left empty.

My greatest question lingers unfulfilled.

My cup of Consolation has been spilled,

And I myself am my worst enemy.

How shall I be recalled when I am killed?

My greatest question lingers unfulfilled.

sweaty and covered in wood shavings,

sawdust, remnants of other people’s

lives. I tell him, words heavy

on my tongue, that I’m pregnant

with someone else’s child.

His smile fragments. “We’re blessed,”

I try to say, but the words won’t come.

Sweet myrrh is my son’s birthright

as are our prayers… but all I taste is bile.

I’m waiting for him to curse my name,

or drop to his knees, callused hands

clenching into fists as he prays.

But he only crosses the cracked tile,

pulls a long-necked beer from the fridge

and sits at the table, as he has done each day

of our short marriage.

“This cannot be happening,” he mutters

to his splayed fingers, his cracked knuckles,

his jagged lifeline and all its  swerves.

I put one soft oiled hand to my belly,

feel the heat of my gut beneath the rough

cloth, feel the fear in my throat.

I’m too young for this shit.

I didn’t ask to be a king’s mother;

neither did he but here we both are,

stuck on opposite ends of the kitchen,

this child in between like a picket fence.

But I see my father’s face reflected

In the family car, of all things,

Innocuously parked in the drive of our

Tired house.

The crack in the fender like the chip in his tooth,

That he hides when he smiles: a tiny display of vanity

From a man who was never too proud to

Sleep on the floor in Chicago or bike six miles

With my mother on the handlebars.

The car was the backdrop for our harshest arguments,

The setting on days when he listed my flaws on his

Scarred fingers. I know the lines by heart—the one on his thumb

From when he sliced down to the bone fixing lunch

For us.

We drive to the gym together every day

When I’m home on breaks; I remember doing the same

When I was a child, too small for the front seat,

Playing tennis, placing nickel bets on what time we’d get home.

It pours, one day, and we sit in the car playing chess,

His careful scientist hands working the tiny screen,

The rain coming down hard. He comes down hard on himself,

Sometimes asking me with his eyes,

While his mouth forms entirely different questions,

“Did I do good?”

I hold this man’s hand and tell him I’m going to kick his ass

At chess one day—he’s a chessmaster. it will never happen.

He will never stop worrying, either, about the

Times he threw things across the room or knocked holes in the walls,

So worn down, weighed down, run down

This world and this country and this life too

Fast, hard, sad for him.

Leah Yegneswaran

this is my test post!