Yesterday was a last minute Stone Soup workshop. I'm going to talk with Tom Tipton at Out of The Blue about doing something regular, perhaps during every other weekend. Going forward with this idea will depend on finding someone wiling to workshop on weeks I can't do it. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Since no one had time to print out copies of a poem to work on, I had us write a new poem based on a mix of two exercises I remembered from my old professor, Alan Feldman. I won't reveal all of the details of the exercise, but it did involve writing about a painting they could choose on a part of the gallery's wall. The painting above is the one I chose for the poem below. I took the last stanza I read to the group yesterday but otherwise kept the poem close to what it was yesterday, editing primarily for clarity.
Pink Elephant Wants A Word With My Old Roommate
Dude, this has got to stop.
We've had a good run, but I can't
do what y ou want, no matter
how expensive or cheap and plentiful
the liquor is going to be.
I look in your eyes now and I hallucinate,
see myself looking at you
looking back at me until my eyes
are traffic signals screaming stop and slow down
in front of a train wreck.
All the while, my imaginary body
somehow catches up with you,
xylophone with shaken off keys
fallng through city grates,
my once pink skin turning
to the peeled merlot grape
you used to buy in bulk.
I get it. I saw Dumbo too,
but now I dance with feet and toes
a brittle rake on ice.
my march is not your march.
I paint myself in black
so you will laughless,
and white face myself so you notice
my ivory dropped off
with your teeth years ago.
Special thanks to workshop participants Lee Varon, Joyce Jellison, Chris Fitzgerald, Jonathan J. Joseph, Martha Boss and James Van Looy.
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