NaPoWriMo Day 28: Geneva, NY - Elizabeth Blackwell To Her Sister Emily

Prompt: Draft a prose poem in the form/style of a postcard.

I found this vintage postcard while doing research for inspiration, got curious and looked up Geneva, NY. It turns out that quite a few well-known people have either lived in, or passed through, Geneva - among them Elizabeth Blackwell, MD, who was the first woman in the United States to be awarded a medical degree. She studied at Geneva Medical College (now known as Hobart College), and went on to blaze a trail, both in the field of women in medicine, and in her commitment to social reform.

More about her remarkable story can be found here.  I used her story as a springboard for the prompt, in the form of a fictional postcard / letter to her younger sister Emily (who became the 3rd woman in the US to receive a medical degree).

GENEVA, NY: ELIZABETH BLACKWELL TO HER SISTER EMILY

Rain makes me think of Bristol, of Wilson Street, your dear old rag dolly leaking stuffing, your shrill demands of  Lizzie make her well! Back then all it took was a needle, thread, and patience. Now in this place, I am become the thread, squeezed through a needle’s eye and stretched into a shape not my own. I am a foot in a sea of eyes, feeling my way through the days. Where the men say, We can, I cannot – I must. The streets are wet black ribbons slick with dreams, under a phosphorous moon. I feel an overwhelming urge to run downstairs into the rain and roll in the puddles until I am drenched, black dress dripping and draggled. I want to go to sleep feeling the weight of dreams drying on my bare skin, to wake in the morning and put on the hopes which have soaked, with the rain, into my garments.

NaPoWriMo Day 27: Queen of Swords

Prompt:  Following Lauren Hunter’s practice of relying on tarot cards to generate ideas for poems, we challenge you to pick a card (any card) from this online guide to the tarot, and then to write a poem inspired either by the card or by the images or ideas that are associated with it.

More playing catch up (the end may be in sight, but my sanity might be approaching zero too). As a swordswoman, it's not surprising I was drawn to the suit of swords!

I know there is a traditional tarot design for all the cards, but when I was hunting about for inspiration, I found this lovely piece by Danielle Meder, and her sketch of the Queen of Swords definitely grabbed me (because in general I wear black by default, and I've outfits that look exactly like that, stilettos and all, and it's so me, even down to the sitting.)

Artist: Danielle Meder

There's a nicely detailed description of the Queen of Swords here. And because the first thing I thought of when gathering ideas for today was a line from Sylvia Plath's 'Lady Lazarus' (I eat men like air), I decided to structure the piece in a similar form. 

QUEEN OF SWORDS

Lady Lazarus’ sister

Has black hair, not red.

A sword

Issued from her mouth

At birth –

When I got older

They took it from me.

Broke it.

Gave me dolls with daisies instead –

So I buried them:

Chubby plastic bodies

Chaste, pink, and plump

With expectations.

Strewed daisy petals

Over their graves.

Sharpened my tongue

To cut like a longsword

Pierce like a dagger

Turned my broken weapon

Into words, edges

Slicing the page.

NaPoWriMo Day 26: Etymology

Prompt: write a poem that includes images that engage all five senses.

I combined today's prompt with the SEAPoWriMo prompt, which was about reclamation - of words and phrases that are commonly used with a negative connotation. Not precisely on topic for that, but then I don't think it's precisely on topic here either.

It also turned out to be one of the most challenging pieces I've written, and required a complete overhaul both for lineation and for clarity. It's long (I hate writing long poems!) and it deals with many aspects of the languages spoken here in Malaysia, as well as the connotations that words can have.

Popo = Cantonese for maternal grandmother
Taugeh = Hokkien for mung bean sprouts
Taukwa = A type of firm Chinese beancurd
Mee goreng = Fried noodles
Kopitiam = A small Malaysian eatery, usually with various hawker food stalls in it.


ETYMOLOGY

1.

I am the same word

       in different languages

       given different meaning

       by tonality and intent.

The boy on the street leers at me.

Ah moi[*], wei ah moi. 
2-tone whistle from pursed lips.

A bird call. Mockingbird call.     

妹. 妹子. Moi zhai [1].

Ngi keh moi leh? my Hakka popo asks my mother.

妹. Mui[2], xiu sam ah, my sister says.

糜. Jiak moi[3], my Hokkien friend invites.

I am daughter

I am sister

I am a bowl of soft congee

           slurped and swallowed.

2.

Her father fries mee goreng at a kopitiam.

Kelinga mee, they called it in the past

       a hybrid of fried yellow noodles

       with spicy sweet potato gravy.

Ingredients:

       Yellow noodles, a handful

           of slippery ancestral strands

           from his father and

           South Indian grandfather

       Taugeh grown from

            the labour and sweat

            of building a nation

            that paves its  roads

            with the burnt stones

            of his ancestors’ dreams

       Chilli paste pungent

            with the bite and scorch

            of derogatory names

            and relentless sun

         Taukwa. Cuttlefish gravy.

         Sweet potato gravy.

         Fat teardrops. Potatoes.

         His wife’s hands slicing

              stars and ingredients

              into her wide metal tray

              hoping to birth a comet

         His love for his daughter

               a perfect boiled egg

               on her plate each morning

               while the rest he cuts up

               for garnish

Kelinga[4]. Kalinga[5].

A difference of one letter

       spanning the divide

       between a glorious kingdom

       and a derogatory taunt.

3.

The walk from her father’s stall to the bus stop

       is 200 metres of narrow lane stretched out

       to 200 kilometres.

Ah moi, ah moi

The boys catcall and jeer at us

       mouths puckered  

       like wrinkled little anuses.

Beady gleaming eyes.
Rats’ eyes.

I want to spit HAM GAA CAAN 咸家鏟[6]
       in ideograms of fire

       and pluck them from the air to hurl:

       a missile, a curse.

We are dead tigers, she and I, vanity kills

       stripped of our claws and teeth

       with knives forged from 
       words.

GLOSSARY:

[*] Ah moi (n): Malaysian slang for ‘girl’.

      Context is all-important.

      The margin between ‘girl’ and ‘sex object’
              is a fine line not delineated 

              by the length of a skirt

              the dip of a neckline

              no matter what they say: 

              it’s all in the mind

    

[1] 妹子, moi4 zhai3 (n) Hakka: Daughter

      Ngi keh moi leh? : Where is your daughter?

      Where is the producer of heirs?
      Where is the iron warrior

       birthed from steel loins?

      

      The distinction is tonality

      and intent

[2] 妹, mui2 (n) Cantonese: Younger sister

      Xiu sam ah: Be careful
      (but care is not always enough

       little sister
       be wise)

[3] 糜, moi2 (n) Hokkien: Congee

      Jiak moi: Eat congee

      The sharing of a meal
       is community
       is love

[4] Kelinga: Said to derived

from ‘Kalinga’ (see [5]).

Formerly used to mean Indian

Tamil, or South Indian
Now a derogatory term

for Indians in Malaysia

[5] Kalinga:

Ancient Indian kingdom

in east-central India
corresponding to pre­sent-day

northern Telangana
northeastern Andhra Pradesh
most of Odisha and

parts of Madhya Pradesh

When did a noble kingdom
become a curse?

[6] 咸家鏟, ham6 gaa1 caan2 (n) Cantonese:
May your whole family be dead
May your line wither, be barren

       as parched water holes

       and dead eye sockets

NaPoWriMo 2018 Day 25: May Be Hazardous To Your Health

Prompt: Write a poem that takes the form of a warning label . . . for yourself! 

Still in the process of catching up (I think I'm never ever going to catch up at this point). As for warning labels, I probably should have been plastered with them from birth, to be perfectly honest. Maybe I should print this one out and stick it on my forehead.


MAY BE HAZARDOUS TO YOUR HEALTH

Take in small doses

       (her world runs at the speed of neutrinos

          thoughts racing behind her eyes like light

            shredding time in fistfuls to make room for more time)

Harmful if swallowed

       (a *swordswoman is never without a weapon

          words oscillate like over-wound springs in the cave of her throat

            trebuchet waiting to be launched in conversation)

               

Able to leap tall buildings at a single bound

      (only when friends, family, and students are involved

          otherwise it’s easier to knock them over sideways

            ‘woman’ is not a synonym for incompetent, helpless, or stupid)

            

May irritate eyes

       (get over yourself, resting bitch face is a thing

          looking pretty is not a requirement of life or intelligence

            will get up in your face if provoked. See * and **)

**Dangerous when provoked

       (see *

         reality runs on intersecting planes of books to stress ratio

            punctuated by felines, chocolate, and swords)

BEWARE! Non-Euclidean

       (disbelieves infinitely more than six possible things before breakfast

          world peace, pink elephants, no Infinity Wars spoilers

             catching up on poetry prompts

              a child that does not ask ARE WE THEEERE YET 

                every five minutes

                 in the car)

NaPoWriMo 2018 Day 24: Requiem Mass

Prompt: Write an elegy – a poem typically written in honor or memory of someone dead. But we’d like to challenge you to write an elegy that has a hopefulness to it.

This was another humdinger of a prompt, not because it was any form of esoteric, but because my month started out with way too many elegies for departed friends. I think my brain just didn't want to face writing yet another one, so it stopped working (that, and having to write a second poem for the SEAPoWriMo prompts is taxing my writerly stamina to the utmost.)

I ended up writing an elegy to old ghosts, and a dead past that needed to be laid to rest.


REQUIEM MASS

Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine
-- Introit of  traditional requiem mass

Twenty-five and terrified of the black hole you called a house

Which was really a trap where a monster in the wall lay in wait

With poison darts in the shape of words

Aiming at you whatever chance he could get

And you, a mermaid struggling in a net of his weaving

Believing you were only a dumb fish.

The sea rolls, swells. The years swallow themselves

And you are no longer a mermaid but Ariel on land

Dumb by choice for what you thought was love

But in reality was narcicissm twisted

To seem like love instead.

To exorcise ghosts, we lay the dead to rest

So I’m laying you to rest, twenty-five

Scatter your ashes for the winds to carry

To the four corners of the earth and beyond.

My tongue loosens, legs merging into scaled iridescence

Ariel returns to the buoyant sea.

NaPoWriMo 2018 Day 23: Travel Journal, Bali

Prompt:  Kate Greenstreet’s poetry is spare, but gives a very palpable sense of being spoken aloud – it reads like spoken language sounds. In our interview with her, she underscores this, stating that “when you hear it, you write it down.” Today, we challenge you to honor this idea with a poem based in sound. 

It just so happens that SEAPoWriMo, the Southeast Asian take on GloPoWriMo, started yesterday - it's a week long challenge to write a poem a day with a prompt by one of the moderators, each of whom hail from a different Southeast Asian country. I only got drafted in today, which sent me into a spasm of anxiety and spazz, because many of the poets are pretty well-known around this region, and I'm always uncomfortable in big groups (which this one is) until I feel at home.

It turns out that today's prompt for GloPoWriMo crosses tendrils with the SEAPoWriMo one - both involve sounds, so I thought hell with it, and wrote one poem for both (is that cheating?)

To hear what a Kecak dance sounds like, have a look and listen here.


TRAVEL JOURNAL, BALI

She tells me about the waves (rshhhhhhh rshhhhhhhhh the amphitheatre by the sea rssshhhhhhhhhhh rsssssssshhhhhh rssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhh look at the crowd she says pointing at the photo on her laptop screen noise noise noise heat (peoplepeeplepeepulbabelbab bla b ((sei ruhig JENNYSTOPRUNNINGCOMEBACKHEREshhhhyttysiä! Inhoan hyttysiäWAI lei chor julaaaaxcusez-moiEH DUDUUUKplease sit down the show’s starting ohgod Nigel this heat)) heathumid birdskree seabreeze fffwwwwwhhh across sweatsticky neck)

krrshkrrrsshhk sandals dragging against rock

krrrrrshhhhk   kshk

and the dancers come

Cakcakcakcakcakcakcakcak cak  cakcak

Cakcakcakcakcakcakcakcak cak  cakcak shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh ts ts

uuuUUUUUUOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAWWWW swaasgaas

 TSIIiiiiiiiiyaHEYaheyaheyaTSIIIiiiii

CakcakcakcakcakcakcakYAAAcakcakcakAAAAcakcakcakAAAAaaaaacak

cakcak

Gliiiiiide (body through air moving a ripple at a time)

Tng tng tng the bells on Rama’s ankles ring

CakcakcakcakHOIcakcakcakcakHOIcakcakcakcakcakcak

Kecakcakcakcakcak

Isn’t it beautiful she says and I watch her drift like a wave (rssshhhhh rsssshhhh) into the moment of sunset she has frozen in the camera’s eye

Uluwatu ulu uuu uu u lu lu lu

luminous

NaPoWriMo 2018 Day 22: Perfect

Prompt: Take one of the following statements of something impossible, and then write a poem in which the impossible thing happens - 

The sun can’t rise in the west 
A circle can’t have corners
Pigs can’t fly
The clock can’t strike thirteen
The stars cannot rearrange themselves in the sky 
A mouse can’t eat an elephant.

Still catching up. The one that first caught my attention was 'A mouse can't eat an elephant', since I'd done the elephant previously. On second reading though, 'A circle can't have corners' started waving at me, and then settled in my brain to percolate, which led to thoughts of how glass blowers start with a round blob of glass, then press it into a mould that shapes it into something which could have angles. Which in turn led to serious problem solving of how a circle could still maintain itself as a circle but still have corners, and then everything sort of snowballed and here we are.

I'm not very happy with this, it feels lacking, but in the interests of catch up, it still gets posted.

PERFECT

The ring is a symbol of constant faith and abiding love

Precious as its material, a perfect circle with no end.

She felt its unfamiliar curve, cool as a damp leaf

As it slid onto the fourth finger of her left hand

Never dreaming that it would grow and swallow her whole

Until she was trapped within its golden arc

Or that he would force her into the narrow angles

Of his ideals - of love, of her.

Everywhere she looked there were shadows

Cast across the endless circle of her being

Corners where monsters came to hide and ghosts

Rose from the grave.

NaPoWriMo Day 21: Narcissus Reborn

Prompt: Try writing a poem that plays with the Narcissus myth in some way. 

I'm playing catch up due to travelling and doctors' appointments outstation, which means that while I had time to think about the prompts, it was pretty futile in terms of what to write. It took a good bit of time, after reading up on the Narcissus story, before it occurred to me that, barring wasting away for love of his reflection and remorse for causing Ameinias' death, the worst thing that could befall him would be to never be allowed to admire himself, or speak of his own perfection - like reflecting things in a mirror. 

And it sort of went from there, although I don't know how successfully that went.


NARCISSUS REBORN

No one tells the rest of the story, the part that came next:

That he was fated to be split in two

Body peeled from soul

Like a muscat grape slipping its skin

Fated to be reborn over and over as both flower

And the spirit of mirrors

Fated to feel the petals of his body wither and fade

While his soul could see the reflections of all others

Except his own, cursed by Nemesis

Nevermore to speak of his perfect beauty.

Who is the fairest of them all, the queen asks.

 The lie burns his throat like bile as he forces bitter words

From reluctant lips, glimpsing briefly, in the face before him

Melancholy Echo’s gaze, now touched by spite.

You, my queen, you are the fairest of them all.

NaPoWriMo 2018 Day 20: Elephant In The Room

Prompt: Write a poem that involves rebellion in some way.

Writing and drawing are two separate things. Usually. Painting and writing are also two separate things, usually, but then there's word painting, where people 'paint' a picture using descriptions. I took that literally: I 'painted' a picture, with words, and I mixed writing and drawing up since a) I don't normally do it b) I decided to rebel by being non-conventional.  


ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM

Truth is an elephant in the room

Everyone sees it but no one knows

How to dispose of it gracefully

Either in word or in deed (elephants

Don’t lend themselves well

To being swept under carpets.)

NaPoWriMo Day 19: Not All Girls Play With Dolls

Prompt: Write a paragraph that briefly recounts a story, describes the scene outside your window, or even gives directions from your house to the grocery store. Now try erasing words from this paragraph to create a poem or, alternatively, use the words of your paragraph to build a new poem.

Once again, this was a surprisingly more difficult prompt than I'd expected - perhaps a pounding migraine had something to do with it. The hard part wasn't the poem, it was the paragraph that precedes the erasure of words.

I am a HEMA (Historial European Martial Arts) swordswoman in training, and earlier in class, my assistant instructor had brought in his buckler and new Regenyei arming sword. He let me play around with them both, much to my delight, and I ended up writing my paragraph about that particular little interaction. 

The poem ended up in two forms: the original erasure poem intact, keeping all the line breaks, and the one in more conventional form. I couldn't decide which one I like better, so I kept them both, although there's a certain movement about the first which I rather am taken by.

***

I have Farhan’s buckler in one hand and his new arming sword in the other. He’s right. The balance is amazing, and even on me – five foot nothing of temper, clumsiness, ambidexterity and chaos – it feels right. It’s exhilarating. Power, science, art, seamlessly integrated into a Regenyei blade that handles like an extension of my arm. The buckler’s heavier than I expected. A well-placed punch with it, and I could break someone’s face. That’s ok with me. It used to matter once, that I wasn’t flawless femininity and skin. Magazines, relatives, and friends all took turns reminding me how far short I fell from grace – later on, boyfriends beat it into me with words and fists. It doesn’t matter now. I’ve got Farhan’s arming sword and buckler, and the boys are pointing out that my light grey outfit matches my weaponry perfectly. Shield maiden, one of them says with a big grin. I’ll take shield maiden over princess any day.

NOT ALL GIRLS PLAY WITH DOLLS (v.1)

                         buckler in one hand                           arming sword in the other       

                                          ambidexterity and chaos

                        exhilarating   power, science, art                                 a Regenyei blade

                                                                                 buckler’s                                                                     well-placed punch                                       could break someone’s face                                  

                                                                                                              flawless femininity and skin

                                               doesn’t matter now                                       

                                            the boys

                                                             shield maiden, one of them says                            

                  I’ll take shield maiden over princess any day

NOT ALL GIRLS PLAY WITH DOLLS (v.2) 

buckler in one hand     arming sword in the other

ambidexterity and chaos

exhilarating     power, science, art     a Regenyei blade

buckler’s well-placed punch

could break someone’s face

flawless femininity and skin

doesn’t matter now

the boys   shield maiden, one of them says

I’ll take shield maiden over princess any day