Inside Out – Diane Wakoski

falloncollins — Wed, 23 May 2012 11:25:06 +0000

I walk the purple carpet into your eye
carrying the silver butter server
but a truck rumbles by,
                      leaving its black tire prints on my foot
and old images          the sound of banging screen doors on hot
             afternoons and a fly buzzing over the Kool-Aid spilled on
             the sink
flicker, as reflections on the metal surface.

Come in, you said,
inside your paintings, inside the blood factory, inside the
old songs that line your hands, inside
eyes that change like a snowflake every second,
inside spinach leaves holding that one piece of gravel,
inside the whiskers of a cat,
inside your old hat, and most of all inside your mouth where you
grind the pigments with your teeth, painting
with a broken bottle on the floor, and painting
with an ostrich feather on the moon that rolls out of my mouth.

You cannot let me walk inside you too long inside
the veins where my small feet touch
bottom.
You must reach inside and pull me
like a silver bullet
from your arm.

A Hundred Bolts of Satin- Kay Ryan

falloncollins — Wed, 23 May 2012 11:11:55 +0000

All you
have to lose
is one
connection
and the mind
uncouples
all the way back.
It seems
to have been
a train.
There seems
to have been
a track.
The things
that you
unpack
from the
abandoned cars
cannot sustain
life: a crate of
tractor axles,
for example,
a dozen dozen
clasp knives,
a hundred
bolts of satin—
perhaps you
specialized
more than
you imagined.

Poor Fellows- Pablo Neruda

falloncollins — Wed, 16 May 2012 11:01:37 +0000

Recent Findings -Idra Novey

falloncollins — Mon, 14 May 2012 11:09:42 +0000

After the cells of Louise Bourgeois

Studies show the difference between legs and arms is in what tends to come after them: hands or feet. As the difference between teaching in a prison and the Ivy League is a question of attendance and if you can tell the weather from the wall.

This tiny spiral staircase in the corner appears to be moving. Some experts say it is not. They say getting a degree in prison is like this.

III

It’s not uncommon, doctors concur, that gnawing on a stone while speaking of clauses to a mother and daughter incarcerated in the same prison may lead to the gnawing of that stone to stone.

Recent polls note a breakdown in language when people say incarceration over generations, a hesitation and.

Too many enclosures make people cold, new data shows, and when it’s cold it’s going to be cold. As for the spider, she’s feeling for an open seam between the walls.

Hunter S. Thompson

falloncollins — Fri, 11 May 2012 11:16:42 +0000

“Sleep late, have fun, get wild, drink whiskey and drive fast on empty streets with nothing in mind but falling in love and not getting arrested.” – Hunter S. Thompson

#1 heckyesssss

falloncollins — Wed, 09 May 2012 10:56:27 +0000

Forget the Final Four, this season’s big news is that VCFA is the winner of the CRW MFA Tournament, 2012! Hosted by authors Bill Roorbach and David Gessner on their fabulous writing-themed blog, Bill and Dave’s Cocktail Hour, this competition pits the top sixteen MFA in Writing Programs in the country against each other in a battle for the rank of “The greatest writing program in the country.” And today it was announced the Vermont College of Fine Arts, a program they called ” unseeded, non-traditional, low-res, upstart” managed to “CRUSH the competition at every juncture.”
This good-spirited race featured the MFA in Writing Programs from heavy-hitters such as Iowa and Ashland. Bill and Dave must have been wearing plaid jackets and sporting pomaded comb-overs because they provided their best sportscaster blow-by-blows to summarize the process:

Ashland and Virginia tech played a nailbiter, but in the end it was scrappy Ashland who prevailed, and maybe got a little cocky: because here came the Monster from Montpelier! Who’da thunk Vermont could take on OSU? But they did so with ease, garnering more votes than their whole half of the bracket combined.

Bill and Dave are speechless, but the system has spoken. Best MFA program in the land? Vermont College of Fine Arts, ladies and gentlemen, VERMONT!

This is the last word, of course, at least for 2012. Bill and Dave’s has spoken. All other rankings are obsolete, refer to them no more. Let’s celebrate in the comments column. And don’t forget to drink responsibly. Riot police are standing by.

We at VCFA are proud to have won this prestigious and entertaining distinction, and owe it all to our loyal and enthusiastic alums, students and faculty. As the blog authors say when comparing this contest to the more tradition Poets & Writers Magazine rankings, “Unlike in the Abramson system, these voters have tasted the food, baby.” Perhaps we should issue each and every voter a VCFA foam finger.

The Top 16 programs in the country according to Bill and Dave’s Cocktail Hours’ scientific and foolproof methodology:

1. Vermont: 192
2. Bama: 64
3. OSU: 51
4. McNeese: 44
5. Goddard: 43 (a spate of late votes would have made G number 3, but…..)
6. George Mason: 35
7. UNCW: 23
8. Ashland: 22
9. SDSU: 21
10. Virginia Tech: 15
11. Arizona State: 13
12. BGSU: 9
13. New School: 7
14. Arizona: 7
15. Iowa: 7
16. Penn State RIP: 5

http://info.vcfa.edu/36collegestreet/bid/125629/We-are-the-champions-my-friends

Carnival- Rebecca Lindenberg

falloncollins — Mon, 07 May 2012 11:29:25 +0000

The mask that burns like a violin, the mask

that sings only dead languages, that loves

the destruction of being put on. The mask

that sighs like a woman even though

a woman wears it. The mask beaded with

freshwater pearls, with seeds. The plumed mask,

the mask with a sutured mouth, a moonface,

with a healed gash that means harvest. A glower

that hides wanting. A grotesque pucker. Here’s

a beaked mask, a braided mask, here’s a mask

without eyes, a mask that looks like a mask

but isn’t—please don’t try to unribbon it.

The mask that snows coins, the mask full of wasps.

Lace mask to net escaping thoughts. Pass me

the rouged mask, the one made of sheet music.

Or the jackal mask, the hide-bound mask

that renders lovers identical with night.

Why can’t I leave you? Ai

falloncollins — Tue, 01 May 2012 11:25:21 +0000

You stand behind the old black mare,
dressed as always in that red shirt,
stained from sweat, the crying of the armpits,
that will not stop for anything,
stroking her rump, while the barley goes unplanted.
I pick up my suitcase and set it down,
as I try to leave you again.
I smooth the hair back from your forehead.
I think with your laziness and the drought too,
you’ll be needing my help more than ever.
You take my hands, I nod
and go to the house to unpack,
having found another reason to stay.

I undress, then put on my white lace slip
for you to take off, because you like that
and when you come in, you pull down the straps
and I unbutton your shirt.
I know we can’t give each other any more
or any less than what we have.
There is a safety in that, so much
that I can never get past the packing,
the begging you to please, if I can’t make you happy,
come close between my thighs
and let me laugh for you from my second mouth.

After Your Death -Natasha Trethewey

falloncollins — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 21:27:47 +0000

First, I emptied the closets of your clothes,
threw out the bowl of fruit, bruised
from your touch, left empty the jars

you bought for preserves. The next morning,
birds rustled the fruit trees, and later
when I twisted a ripe fig loose from its stem,

I found it half eaten, the other side
already rotting, or—like another I plucked
and split open—being taken rom the inside:

a swarm of insects hollowing it. I’m too late,
again, another space emptied by loss.
Tomorrow, the bowl I have yet to fill.

I Think Of You… -Nazim Hikmet

falloncollins — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 21:04:32 +0000

I think of you
and I feel the scent of my mother
my mother, the most beautiful of all.

You are on the carousel of the festival inside me
you hover around, your skirt and your hair flying
Mere seconds between finding your beautiful face and losing it.

What is the reason,
why do I remember you like a wound on my heart
what is the reason that I hear your voice when you are so far
and I can’t help getting up with excitement?

I kneel down and look at your hands
I want to touch your hands
but I can’t
you are behind a glass.
Sweetheart, I am a bewildered spectator of the drama
that I am playing in my twilight.