yourfriendlaurenyoung-blog

[yourfriendlaurenyoung-blog]

Ok, so: you’re a nymph and you

are committed to a life of ascetiscim

basically: a woods-nun

you’re not married to

GOD (big man in the sky version)

but are in a committed worship-ship

with the Goddess of the Not Being Entered by Dicks and

Playing in the Woods

Artemis really appreciates you

she gave you a gift:

a godly killer shot with a bow and arrow

Daphne, you are hitting every deer,

eating their bodies

tawny-furred Christs with real blood,

not grape juice or red wine

eat of their holy bodies

meander through the undergrowth,

pack of feral babes

you’re so down for this: it is a pleasing life

as per your goddess

yes, your virginity is unviolated

Artemis says

virginity is about dicks going in

and you are enjoying

sliding against other naiads

of huntress worship

sleeping in patches of moss

ascending trees, tanning beautiful hides,

meeting the self one only finds

in a silent, screaming wood

doing what he lied about doing in

on Walden Pond,

foraging for mushrooms

roasting them/

the idea of being anything but this

over a fire

[yourfriendlaurenyoung-blog]

Not enough money to pay my taxes feels like nothing to me

I’m numb, and asking for an extension:

I’ve been trying for days to write a poem about Daphne and Apollo, the chase, the laurel tree

the shame hits me, a to-do list item like

a slap, a laurel switch: I��m crowned

Call this a draft (not a draught —drink one and pay sick tax for days) to get back on the wagon

Call it whatever it takes to get it done,

Sighing from every room of our house

Death and taxes death and taxes:

I am not ungovernable: funding death with taxes

[yourfriendlaurenyoung-blog]

Yahoo Answers the Question of Are you Pregnant before your Hysterectomy

You are gregnant which is supposed to be hard to become for you, due to your bicornate uterus and scarred reproductive system. Where most uteruses are shaped like a balloon, yours is shaped like a ram’s head or a heart. Your uterus has a septum. You saw it on the 3D ultrasound, saw your ovaries and their eggs, saw live stream of your reproductive system.Your eggs were young and healthy. They said by 34, it would be unlikely you’d be able to get pegnat.

If you did get pregant, you learned the appointment with the 3D ultrasound, your belly would bulge off to one side, uncentered. In a balloon shaped uterus, the baby has plenty of room, but yours is essentially one half of what’s ideal : an egg who chose a sperm would implant on the endometrium (rich nutrient lining) of one side of your uterus and grow outward to that side. One of your friends says that she knew someone who carried a baby 8 months off to one side like this and that it was cute and funny. It sounds like body horror to you.

[yourfriendlaurenyoung-blog]

I want candy, bubble gum, and taffy

(I want maldon, miso, kimchi)

Skip to the sweet shop with my sweetheart Sandy

(Skip to the ramen shop )

Got my pennies saved so I'm her sugar daddy

(Same same)

I'm her Hume Cronyn and she's my Jessica Tandy, I want candy!

(I can’t believe HUME was name)

put it in a pile, split it with my biddie 50/50 down the line

(that’s girl boss shit, right down the line)

Miss you, MC Pee Pants

prompt 11

“Is this the real life? / Is this just fantasy?”

“I read the news today, oh boy…”

“The world is a vampire…”

“At first I was afraid, I was petrified”

“There is a house in New Orleans”

“You shake my nerves and you rattle my brain”

“I went down down down and the flames went higher.”

“The future’s so bright, I gotta wear shades.”

“Nothing ain’t nothing, but it’s free.”

And if you’re interested in learning more about villanelles, you can find some good information at the Poetry Foundation website.

Happy writing!

[yourfriendlaurenyoung-blog]

Panpsychism (or, Calculating the Volume of 6th Grade, Last Period, Before Spring Break)

loud and loquacious

decibels drive daydreamers:

roused revived reawakened

to calculate the volume, we find the shape and dimensions of the

classroom culture, then apply the appropriate formula:

multiply morose middle-school machinations by

classroom cultures cultivated in

petri-dishes populated with panpsychism

in the petri public schools provide

parabolas of pacts predicated on popularity,

pallid palimpsests pamper a panoply of pre-teen problems

sweaty souls certain solipsism

surface tension of self slipping sidewise, sly

and severing seams

Day 10 of NaPoWriMo

Prompt Day 10 from napowrimo.net

Yesterday, we looked at a poem that used sound in a very particular way, to create a slow and mysterious feeling. Mark Bibbins’ poem, “At the End of the Endless Decade,” uses sound very differently, with less eerieness and more wordplay. Today, we’d like to challenge you to write a poem that, like Bibbins’, uses alliteration and punning. See if you can’t work in references to at least one word you have trouble spelling, and one that you’ve never quite been able to perfectly remember the meaning of.

[yourfriendlaurenyoung-blog]

the rhyming prompt held my tongue (Day 9 of 30 NaPoWriMo)

“I saw a snake with a party hat on

that was cute” fail to mute the video

Party Foul

ig offering the apple and biting, fighting

moving lightning

snakes party cuter

on the World Wide Web:

fine

social media: haughty looters of data and time

do investigative journalism about the

Ramapo riot, loose yourself on

apple four loko

Rhyme prompt makes writing more like

Spiting, moonlighting as original sin

drunk on cider, poetry, virtue,

Baudelaire on a Wednesday

PROMPT 9 from napowrimo.net

Like music, poetry offers us a way to play with and experience sound. This can be through meter, rhyme, varying line lengths, assonance, alliteration, and other techniques that call attention not just to the meaning of words, but the way they echo and resonate against each other. For a look at some of these sound devices in action, read Robert Hillyer’s poem, Fog. It uses both rhyme and uneven line lengths to create a slow, off-kilter rhythm that heightens the poem’s overall ominousness. Today we’d like to challenge you to try writing a poem of your own that uses rhyme, but without adhering to specific line lengths. For extra credit, reference a very specific sound, like the buoy in Hillyer’s poem.

[yourfriendlaurenyoung-blog]

School Ghazal (Day 8 of 30 NaPoWriMo)

sheaves of belled time, two-thirds of hours times nine; 

most people you’ve met have done it, spent 8-4 in school.

counted: who’s lunch boxing, who’s beef-scoop taco (0),

 who’s cereal/muffin/bagel bag (6), cold? hot lunch, school.

spend each sunday spinning, “planning” by screen staring 

spiral upon sentence:  will i work even in a school?”

to buck a sick and slippery system, i’m going to unpack,

empower past that interior turn, churn my vision of school.

balls of light, most every kid, baby meanness simple and 

in its way, spawned by the cruelty of being policed always school.

i think maybe adults sense i’m on the kids’ side: ms. young, whose

goal, not control, but safety. sad for me: that’s not it in school.

home, 4 pm: wash face and hands, chalk dried lips, skin, and

eyes: old-school classroom of wood, sundrenched for a school.

drained at night, almost a dog who played all day, a brain alight.

lauren, again, not ms. young. split yourself to work at the school.

darkly, when sleep defects. story on story of kids killed, i have a plan.

aluminum pink baseball bat: I try to kill who tries to shoot up the school.

PROMPT 8 from napowrimo.net

The ghazal (pronounced kind of like “huzzle,” with a particularly husky “h” at the beginning) is a form that originates in Arabic poetry, and is often used for love poems. Ghazals commonly consist of five to fifteen couplets that are independent from each other but are nonetheless linked abstractly in their theme; and more concretely by their form. And what is that form? In English ghazals, the usual constraints are that:

the lines all have to be of around the same length (though formal meter/syllable-counts are not employed); and

both lines of the first couplet end on the same word or words, which then form a refrain that is echoed at the end of each succeeding couplet.

Another aspect of the traditional ghazal form that has become popular in English is having the poet’s own name (or a reference to the poet – like a nickname) appear in the final couplet.

Want an example? Try Patricia Smith’s “Hip-Hop Ghazal.”

[yourfriendlaurenyoung-blog]

Why i am not a ballad (Day 7 of 30 NaPoWriMo)

i’m neither slowdance

nor

do i leave room for the lord

nor

thine partner’s boner

nor

futureproofed hyperlooped production quality

808 drummed

Historically, 666 out 666 ballads

use that one garage

band loop

in cry me a river

(justice for britney,

ruin his world tour)

i’m neither sapsong

nor

orally transmitted

old-timey stories

of yore

when was yore, horometrically?

I’m not riming with ancient mariners:

ancestrally, albatrosses draped

their living downy oiled

around my people

held them lovingly

i would never betray a bird

[yourfriendlaurenyoung-blog]

LEMONGRASS NEWS (day 6 of 30 napowrimo)

i’ve unfollowed,

unsubscribed, rolled tight

like a winter vole

and yet

bad news trickles

droplets pitter-patter

from mouths of friends,

baristas’ eyerolls,

partner eager to share

divide the terror by way of me

no! refuse! i am vole!

good news by way of

the typically unholy

city facebook:

favorite thai restaurant

from our old hometown

coming

a news item, true in the

old-fashioned sense of true:

there is now really

a place to get noodles

scented lemongrass,

a walk away.

(still, i am consumed:

fear mindwandering tartly

into future, deftly steering

my ship of shame onto

the shores of my own

relative safety. systems built

to “protect” me at such

unholy cost: only a white woman

could be soothed by lemongrass’s

tart)

Now, on hard

days we’ve got

glass noodles glossed

in sauce so subtle…

i’ll buy you dinner, if my account

isn’t overdrawn. i can’t fix

shit,

but hot noodles scented

lemongrass might hold us over

[yourfriendlaurenyoung-blog]

FRESHED SPINCH STRAWBEBBIE BLOOB (Day 5 of 30 NaPoWriMo)

each sprank, fralls 

of skylems, 

chewbing 

brightly, praiseled 

bushes womble heavy

with jersey bloobs. 

beside heaty meric 

pamphs so flambo,

sprawlike strawbebbies

tendrilled concertinæd.

foog, o, foog, wamp

you belined

sonksank-yachtday

perald hamps

obliterate the choir.

companied plashes:

spinch hoved,

matato-leaf, woodstocking. 

sun

lare unwooling lamvs

and sheem

grazing August.

zeps left to port,

igfield taste of

syrumsh:

moisting graint

alarf, delisherous

bimp of bloobs. 

[yourfriendlaurenyoung-blog]

i met your maker at a party (Day 4 of 30 NaPoWriMo)

after Denise Levertov's "Living with a Painting"

i met your maker

at a party she threw

or in a church 

or at a celebration

where you live now

depends on

who + when +

how we ask

chronologies differ

o, girl so sorry

you’re crooked

sorry, i’m struggling

to describe

what it means 

to live with you

you know 

i love you

your maker and i

hung you

the only way 

we know how

frenzied

(always felt 

like bacchanal)

your maker 

named you

caveat dominus 

still,

some people

call you

girl with object

the shadow

of the smoker

translucent brown 

do we exist in his gaze? 

your snatched waist

long legs

you’re all looks!

bluegreen synonyms 

for acres couldn’t capture 

your maker 

wondered:

is he 

too disgusting

asked me twice

i don’t know

i suppose

is it ok

that i’m 

watching you, too

smoking 

gawking

denise levertov

when living with

her painting

she gave hers 

“cold violet”

your maker wouldn't!

subordinate

 girl color

horror emoji shirt color

i’ll never look

at johnny jump ups 

the same

still, they smell

otherworldly good

Day 4 prompt from napowrimo.net

In her poem, “Living with a Painting,” Denise Levertov describes just that. And well, that’s a pretty universal experience, isn’t it? It’s the rare human structure – be it a bedroom, kitchen, dentist’s office, or classroom – that doesn’t have art on its walls, even if it’s only the photos on a calendar. Today, we’d like to challenge you to write your own poem about living with a piece of art.

Photo taken on Kodak GC/UltraMax 400 Color Negative Film on a lil Kodak Ektar

[yourfriendlaurenyoung-blog]

Why I am not a novelist (Day 3 of 30 NaPoWriMo)

after Frank O'Hara

I’m a poet,

not a novelist:

Novelists

greet dawn’s rosy touch

fingers clacking 

laboring scenes, 1000 words

a day, coffee blacked.

novelists are farmers,

premeditating lean winters, 

diagramming berms. 

poets in a field of tulips, 

pollinated

eyes, nose, ears

fogging 

transmissions

fragments of sense

bits and bobs

linguistic tchotchkes.

every night,

I bedtime

into novels

eating of their discipline

dreaming of mine.

Photo taken with Kodak Ektar on Kodak Gold 200 Film.

Day 3 prompt from napowrimo.net: The American poet Frank O’Hara was an art critic and friend to numerous painters and poets In New York City in the 1950s and 60s. His poems feature a breezy, funny, conversational style. His poem “Why I Am Not a Painter” is pretty characteristic, with actual dialogue and a playfully offhand tone. Following O’Hara, today we challenge you to write a poem that obliquely explains why you are a poet and not some other kind of artist – or, if you think of yourself as more of a musician or painter (or school bus driver or scuba diver or expert on medieval Maltese banking) – explain why you are that and not something else!

[yourfriendlaurenyoung-blog]

This rough magic I here abjure (Day 2 of 30 NaPoWriMo)

Dear Joanne,

Can I call you Joanne, or

you prefer the masc JK? More masc, you said,

so little boys won’t be turned off, so you could introduce your

your magic son,

a little evil built-in.

I won’t call Joanne your dead name

(I read your screed on

on the world wide web)

still, I didn’t forget

how death splits us, drinking silver half-lives,

souls beyond the binary,

split in sevens, unimportant apparently

everyone is asking:

Has black mold infested your brain, axons

choked black of the binary,

the white stench of fear?

SPEW a joke, your oft-named avatar:

bloody brilliant lonely she/her

you attached to

he/him who scorns her

sense of justice, her power

her teeth.

you, Joanne, trans-

figured into superlative riches

trans-

muted from

from prole to self-appointed

monitoring the

the means of reproduction

transpiring, transpring

I teach your book to my fifth grade,

where gender flows like power,

binary chugging trains

derailing

your stories theirs,

we use loved ones where

once fit family

the kid who bends rules

trans-

formed by readers, bending

gender

leaders queer in post-production.

Joanne, I’m in your bathroom

moaning about you.

Cast open the doors.

And deeper than did ever plummet sound,

I'll drown your book

JK, you have so much to learn from us

muddled as we are:

cast us down

at your peril.

Mischief,

Managed to Forgive

Day 2 Prompt from NaPoWriMo.net

And now for our daily prompt – optional, as always. Anne Carson is a Canadian poet and essayist known for her contemporary translations of Sappho and other ancient Greek writers. For example, consider this version of Sappho’s Fragment 58, to which Carson has added a modern song-title, enhancing the strange, time-defying quality of the translation. And just as many songs do, the poem directly addresses a person or group – in this case, the Muses. Taking Carson’s translation as an example, we challenge you to write a poem that directly addresses someone, and that includes a made-up word, an odd/unusual simile, a statement of “fact,” and something that seems out of place in time (like a Sonny & Cher song in a poem about a Greek myth).

Photo: Kodak Ektar on Lomo 800 film

[yourfriendlaurenyoung-blog]

O, Omens (Day 1 of 30 NaPoWriMo)

O, Omens

(How far is far from Florentine Codex how

far from my high school love’s 

house that reminded all of the Fall of Ushers:

Edgar Allen Ethan Allen Tinky Winky, though

there

played out The Omen’s 

All for You Damien, nanny death

it from the second floor toward foyer

All for you, Damien!

never acted out the thud, the jump

just the declaration of

devotion) 

social studies: til Cortez cooked it

omens had a protocol–

heard growls packing heat, rumbles with weight?

Soothsayers told it:

such bad news, but we had protocol

I myself have to go

 and set it on fire and burn it in your house.

Myself? O, I burned in that stone, that 

teak masterpiece with pool you skimmed across Aprils

burned like crimson cheeks, like 

divorce driving days dark and soundless.

burn the papers in my house

thud: 4 kids in the American South,

quoting Catholic Brand Bible Verse, 

your mom, then only a little crack, it now widened as I watched

your vacancy unfilled, soothsaid

your all for one vision of death, rebranding as new topographics

Day 1 Prompt from napowrimo.net

And now, to round out our first day, here’s our optional prompt! As with pretty much any discipline, music and art have their own vocabulary. Today, we challenge you to take inspiration from this glossary of musical terms, or this glossary of art terminology, and write a poem that uses a new-to-you word. For (imaginary) extra credit, work in a phrase from, or a reference to, the Florentine Codex.

Photo taken with Kodak Ektar on Kodak Gold 800 film