Poetry Blitz, Nine.

Tonight's edition of book ends' National Poetry Month poetry blitz (read more about it here) is an extra-special edition for two reasons. First, because I am going to post a poem written by none other than yours truly, the very poem that is mentioned in this post--as requested by a faithful reader of mine. Second, tonight's post is special because today is an important day... the 5 year anniversary of the day T & I started dating. And the poem that I am posting just happens to be about him. So, happy anniversary, T!

Rain, Snow, and Other Weather

by Lauren Stacks

[Found in Time You Let Me In: 25 Poets Under 25]

I'm like the weather, never really can predict

when this rain cloud's gonna

burst; when it's the high or it's

the low, when you might need a light jacket.

Sometimes I'm the slush that sticks

to the bottom of your work pants,

but I can easily be the melting snowflakes

clinging to your long lashes.

I know that some people like:

sunny and seventy-five,

sunny and seventy-five,

sunny and seventy-five,

but you take me as I am and never

forget to pack an umbrella.

(c) Lauren Stacks

photo: weheartit

Thesis Excerpt

Alright, readers, in celebration of the 60 thesis pages I turned in yesterday, I am going to give you all a glimpse of my very-rough first draft of the opening of the first chapter of my novel. Take note that by the time this is in its final draft, it will probably look very different than what you see here--but, enjoy!

The Farmer’s Almanac had called for snow on the day their mother died. Their father was down in the barn—his wife was dying, but the cows still had to be milked.

Their mother was in her bed, but even with the frozen air coming in through the open window, even with the chance of snow sitting heavy in the air, she was still burning, flushed, her eyelids sweating.

Just last week Billy and Evelyn had come in from the back pasture, where they had been building a snow house, using sticks and rocks and packed snow to make a little room among the bare trees and bushes. When they entered the toasty house, Clara was in her bassinette in their mother and father’s room, shrieking her head off. “Mom!” Billy yelled, his boots still on, dripping puddles on the kitchen floor. “Mom, Clara’s fussing upstairs!”

“Take your boots off,” Evelyn had scolded him, hanging her wet outer clothes on a hook in the mudroom. She wandered through the house wondering where her mother was. On the love seat in the living room, she was curled into a ball, her knees tucked into her chest, hair sprawled over the floral patter Evelyn loved to traces with her index finger. Evelyn shook her mother’s arm, lightly at first, and then harder.

Her mother had sat up, looking around her like she was in a new place she’d never been. “I don’t feel well,” she said, looking not at Evelyn but out the window at the white slush that filled their yard. “Go get your father,” she said.

“But Clara…” Evelyn started.

“I know,” he mother had said. “Go get your father, Evelyn.”

And so Evelyn had slid her feet into Billy’s too-small boots, had run over to the barn without even a coat on because her mother’s voice had been scared, because last summer Mrs. Pearson from their church had fallen ill and died only a day later. Evelyn’s stomach had started to ache, and then all she wondered was whether or not she would be sick, too.

Without any brilliant snow, the light peeking through the draped windows in the parlor was pale, like it was early evening, even though they had just woken up. If their mother hadn’t been dying in the next room she’d be scolding Evelyn for playing on the chaise lounge. “It’s our nicest piece of furniture,” she’d say, something in her eyes like happiness.

Christmas was three days away. They knew not to ask their father when they’d be cutting the tree. Their father’s face of late was tight, like when one of the cows was about to have a baby and he would walk out to the barn in the middle of dinner to check, still chewing pot roast as he went.

The children heard boots stomping at the front door, clomping like snow was stuck to the soles, but it hadn’t started snowing yet; they’d been watching for it all morning.

Thanks for reading.

L. Stacks

A Spoonful of Peas (Excerpt)

This fall, I took a Creative Nonfiction II class, and slowly fell even more in love with the genre that I was never quite sure about. I found I was enthralled by the lyric essay, and knew that creative nonfiction could expand the boundaries of merely "telling the truth" and borrow elements from both fiction and poetry. To be honest, I've been a lot happier with my creative nonfiction for the past few months than I have with my ever-slow novel. So here's a very short excerpt from a very short piece--under 1k words!--I am (hopefully) almost finished with. This is the first of five sections. Enjoy this taste.

"A Poisoned Apple, a Spoonful of Peas"

One.

My sister and I would sit side by side: always, I was the Barbie-player, the one bending limbs and combing plastic hair. Paige, always the open-mouthed, movie-watcher, would suck her thumb and lean her taut body forward as Snow White ran through the forest, eyes peering at her from all directions in the dark. When Snow White would let out her long scream, Paige, bouncing, her small body stiff, would scream too: would let a shriek loose from her small throat, a screech the shape of a bell curve, the sharpness of it echoing off the walls of our playroom. I wouldn’t cringe, would keep shoving Barbie’s wide hands into her small sleeves. I was used to it, used to all of it: the doctor’s visits, the song-singing to calm her down, the locking doors and speaking in a clear voice so she might let forth her own small voice and speak back. But as I did all of these things, inside, I was waiting.

Even as I was reciting the words taught to me, reading them like a script: “Paige has a rare genetic disorder called Angelman’s Syndrome, meaning she will always function at the age of a three-year-old, not matter her actual age,” even then, I was waiting. When recited my lines to strangers in a grocery store, when I performed for my classmates, I didn’t quite believe the words myself. I was forever waiting for my sister to wake up. Like the princesses in the movies she loved, maybe the real Paige—the sister that would borrow my clothes, who could unlock doors, and pick fights with me—was hidden behind some kind of spell, a poisoned apple of sorts. Maybe that’s all ‘genetics’ was: a deep, black magic so binding that people hid it away behind science and doctors and blood work tests with sharp needles.

And so I waited for the spell to lift.

L. Stacks

Rescue Narrative: A Zine by Lauren Stacks

It's finally finished! (My last final and thus, the semester!)

This semester, in my Women & Gender Studies class (Sex and Gender in Pop Culture), we studied zines briefly and I became enthralled with the form. My current favorite is Doris.

That said, I decided to make my own zine for my final project for WGS404. For a group project, I had done a lot of research on the distortions of Grimms fairy tales into the Disney versions so many of us know today, and decided to focus my zine on that.

Introducing...

... Rescue Narrative #1 Cinderella

"Liberating Fairy Tales' "Rescued" Women, One Maiden At A Time"

[Above: Front and Back Cover]

[Inside my zine, you'll find background info on Cinderella,

including information about both the Disney and Grimms versions, and the different representations of her story that can be found today.

Additionally, I have rewritten the tale in hopes that

my version can help diminish some of the patriarchal values and

gender roles that the other versions promote.

Also, I simply wanted to write a version from Cinderella's point of view

so that she can actually have a voice, and explain what she wants.]

Excerpt from my tale:

One day, when my stepsisters were clinging to their mother's skirts while she tried to get supper ready, she said, "Ella, can't you entertain them just for awhile so that I can get this hot food on the table?"

I tugged their little hands in mine over to the braided rug by the fireplace. I tried humming to them, but they just crawled back toward their mother. I tickled one, but then the other would escape. I played peek-a-boo by holding an old pan up to my face, but still they would scurry away when my eyes were covered.

I turned, reached a finger into the cooling cinders in the fire. My finger a dusty black, I smeared lines onto my face. I became a cat, mewing and pretending to paw at my stepsisters. They giggles, mewing back. I pretended to wash a paw, to stalk along the rug like I was hunting for mice.

Enthralled, they laughed and shrieked, "Ella! Ella! Cinder-Ella!"

And so it stuck.

[If you want to read more, please leave me a comment and I can give you a copy of my zine.]

---

Whew, and now I'm ready to crash...

L. Stacks

Progress

Today I organized the novel I'm working on. Up until this point, it was a massive blob of words and sections and dates scattered throughout four different word documents, and two different journals. For someone who prides herself in being organized, I was really quite disgusted with myself. 

So after several hours of typing, copying and pasting, and reading Coraline to reward myself, I was pleasantly surprised to find that I have 9,262 words of my novel written, equaling 37 pages and roughly six chapters so far. 

Here is an excerpt of a very-new section I recently wrote:

[Clara, one of the main characters, is reflecting. Rebecca is her step-mother.]

Clara

My earliest memory is of waiting. Sitting in the car, my feet dangling from the seat. It was cold outside, and my stockings did not keep the cold from tingling the fine hairs on my legs. My mittens were worn, but my hands still warm. Mother had made the mittens, so they were made well.

I could see my breath in the car. I imagined that I was a man--one of my father's friends, maybe--smoking a cigar out by the cow barn. I blew a puff of air: white, like a cloud. Like the mist that sits on the back pond on winter mornings.

I was waiting for Rebecca. She had errands, she had said, as she pinned curls around her ears and neck. But we didn't go to the post office or the bank or even McMillen's feed store to buy oats. Instead, the car was parked outside a small brick house just outside of town, and Rebecca has said, "Be quiet, like a little mouse, and I'll be back in a piece."

And now, my memory fails me as to how long I sat waiting, and to whether or not I began to lose the feeling in my toes or the tip of my nose. But I do remember Rebecca returning, a single pin from a curl above her ear sliding from her dark hair. She turned, her own breath in the air like the fire from a dragon, not a cloud like my own had been. She said, "Now you just go ahead and forget about this little stop here, Clara." Her breath smelled stale and thick. "And if I hear one word of it out of you, we'll have to get the wooden spoon out."

I remember my breath was frosty almost the whole way home until the car finally warmed just before we turned onto our lane.

L. Stacks

A New Design

Here's an excerpt from a poem I wrote about my grandmother, the second section of three. It is currently untitled. 

II. 

She sits across from you, her gaze smoldering like the cigarette

tucked between wrinkled fingers. At age six, you love

to wake up early on these mornigns at Grandma's house as you crave

the comfort of sitting across the table from this woman.

Not much is said, but not much is needed. The warm golden haze

of the room is thick enough to keep out all words, so only the most crucial

are uttered: look! a humingbird or the beach get bigger and bigger each year

or have some coffee cake. Your fingers itch to touch the pink crystal salt and

pepper shakers sitting in the center of the table, but you know she

likes it better if you sit still. More than anything, you want to please

the woman sitting on the other side of the plastic tablecloth.

And somewhere in-between the jotted answers to nine-down and seventeen-

across, she will glance at you as you squirm in the sqeaky

wicker chair and a small smile will form. She will shake her head, still hording

that smile, and tug at the diamond flower-shaped ring on her finger.

Now, reach out your slender fingers to grasp the salt shaker. Tumble it

over, small white grains cover the smooth checks of the tablecloth.

A gruff sound from her throat, and she is laughing. It's not pretty like the sparkles

on her fingers or the pearls on her neck, but you like it anyway.

---

I love my new blog design. Thanks to Adam Morgan for helping with the design!

L. Stacks