Archive for the ‘Poetry’ Category

• THE WRITING PROCESS-what I remember what I don’t

  Date: 2021.02.20 | Category: Assignments, Poetry, Septuagenarian, The Art of Writing | Response: 0

  The Writing Process-What I Remember; What I Don’t

   

  A student once said to me that she appreciated me telling the class to keep everything.  Keep each and every draft of your writing, your manuscript.  Did I say that?

   

  Actually, I save nothing.  Okay, next to nothing.  When did I start letting go? It’s not about keeping what brings me joy.  My writing isn’t joyful.  Although, someone once said it had sass.

   

  I have always decluttered.  Every two or three months I purge-this includes not only things, but sometimes, people (sometimes they purge me).  But since the Pandemic, actually even before, I started a momentous purge—maybe it was when I turned 70 and knew any day now could be my last and why make my children go through my things, things they wouldn’t want.  Even worse, if they, without paying any attention to who I was, threw them out without a nod or a recognition.

   

  My office files are fairly pristine.  Sorted, labeled, shelved:  insurance, taxes, car, condo, publications—mine and those of my friends.  Yet, as the piles of my essays and poems thin, I am heart struck to notice a journey of words that repeat, that sail forth, that bring me to my writing/life today at the age of 73.

   

  I have a book forthcoming. March 2021, LHP:  Septuagenarian: love is what happens when I die. Now that’s a scary title if not understood as a metaphor.  The mock-up of the cover has the sub-title in small font size.  What does that mean?  Are we afraid of death?  Actually, the title came from a poem within the manuscript and it stuck, the line in the title, not the poem.  It’s a metaphor.  Clarissa Pinkola Estés said What must I give more death to today, in order to generate more life? I say, what must I let go of to generate love, be love, give love, get love.

   

  As I fumble through boxes of what I have not yet been able to discard, I discover a few poems that haven’t yet found their way to the trash.  One poem in particular, but there are others, starts out like this:

   

  “I woke up knowing I was dead.  The first thing I’ve been sure of all my life.  The marks stretched, some visible and some invisible.  Stretched past cardboard boxes.  None of them empty,  Each box filled with an arm or a leg.”

   

  The two-page poem contain boxes each labeled by a decade. It ends with:  “This was love.  She had finally gotten what she wanted.  But she was no longer who she was. She didn’t recognize herself….”

   

  The poem was dated October 15, 1999.  Only three years after I earned an MFA. There are hand-written revisions.  There is a short version printed in red.  A note says Vulva Riot.  There is a chorus that reads:  “Stretch marks, mark time, highway marks, passing marks, remarks, earmarks, market, marker, question marks, magic markers, grave markers, stretch marks.”

   

  Sometimes we don’t know why we say things, do things, save things—write things.  But there is significance to our actions.  I am glad I saved this poem. If I had come across it earlier, it would be in my book.  It would be the Introduction, the Foreword.  I am going to edit the poem.  This poem will not be discarded.  There are no rules I told my students.  Save all your drafts or don’t.  Discard everything so future generations won’t be bothered, or save what has been your life line and hope someone will embrace it.

   

  WRITING EXERCISE:  choose a word, such as mark and explore it and all related words by sound, by meaning, or both.  Create a chorus/a short verse.  Let it be the pattern that emerges.  How do you fill the empty spaces in-between?  Are they boxes marked by decades such as:

   

  “One box, marked 1953-1963, contained Hostess Cup Cakes.  Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup.  Barbie dolls.  Captain, May I.  Sorry.  Sugar and Spice.  Axel and His Dog. Captain Kangaroo. Nancy Drew. Bobbsey Twins.  The Little Engine That Could.  Pop Beads,  Roller Skates.  Crinolines. Hula Hoops.  Red Rover.  Pony Tails.  Our Redeemer Lutheran Church. Kool Aide. “Go Tell Aunt Rhody the Ol’ Gray Goose Is Dead”. The Salvation Army Book Store on Nicollet Island. Government Surplus.  A metal Grocery Cart.  Trading Cards.  Air Raid Drills.  Standish Elementary School.  Woolworths. Wonder Bread.”

   

  I probably did tell the student to save all of her writing.  I probably meant it.  Much of my writing, my former life was left behind when I made, yet another relationship move.  This one sudden.  Sometimes things aren’t saved because we can’t take them with us.  But sometimes, a book authored and signed by you to another poet will show up on a Google search and you know not everything is lost, it just might have found a new home.

   

  Sherry Quan Lee

  February 18, 2021

• FOUND POEM

  Date: 2021.01.13 | Category: Assignments, LHP/MHP, Poetry, Septuagenarian | Response: 0

  FOUND POEM

  Attributed to Septuagenarian: love is what happens when I die (March 2021)

   

  One doesn’t have to imagine good and evil amidst all this terror

  sadness, the bones and the blood surrender

  we can make a difference we are all somebody

  we are not on the backs on the backs on the backs

  of sorrow

   

  that preceded

   

  head separated from body

  body separated from country

  family separated

   

  love guarantees memory        madness

  guns in white rooms the ghost

  of a man an unholy ghost trying to rewrite the story

   

  what if what if what if asking the questions is [not] enough; sometimes

   

  I feel like a boxer punching    the world

  is heavy that’s when the silence is broken

  not with words but with images   children

   

  didn’t know what to make of the bickering

  children got lost in the silences babies suffering;

  the father the mother the siblings gone

  a newspaper headline

   

  to the wicked and the wise there is a difference

  between opinion and truth, a space where dying

  to love where freedom is clearly not where in the world we are

   

  divisive and our lives are at risk

  tolerate a difficult word; racism, white men with assault rifles; death

   

  is temporary

   

  history implodes on a regular irregular heartbeat the charade is over this year

   

  love

  like a sorcerer reads palms this is love choking on air,

  ready to survive pedestals

  collapse amidst a pandemic

   

  hallelujah!

   

  as I sip my morning coffee it is grief it is death it is love;

  hate travels the ♥ broken is what saves us.

   

  © Sherry Quan Lee January 12, 2021

   

  ASSIGNMENT: I’ve been thinking about the recent insurrection at the capitol, the fast and flowing media coverage, the attempts to oust the 45th, etc.  My thought was, as a poet, I should write a found poem based on various print and even video media; but, I thought it would be complicated because of copyright, what is fair use, and how to attribute my sources (unless there is no thought of publishing it).  Instead, I turned to my own writing using only text from my forthcoming book.  Try this as an assignment, use words and phrases from what you have previously written and “find” a poem. I started with a goal in mind, to discover what I might have, perhaps unknowingly, said beyond the personal, have I entered the world?  Having a theme in mind isn’t necessary, it is enough to just randomly choose words and phrases you are drawn to as you reread what you have written over a particular span of time.

  NOTE: The poem published here is a first draft.

• A MOMENT OF SILENCE an online anthology

  Date: 2020.07.27 | Category: Online Anthologies, Poetry | Response: 0

  SAY HIS NAME–GEORGE FLOYD

  Visit the following link for “A Moment of Silence”/online anthology –edited by Shá Cage

  https://blackmnvoices.com/

  “Daily our existence as Black bodies in white space is threatened. Yet, daily we lift up our joy, our truths, and our voices as an act of resistance! I invite community to pause and bear witness to what some of the leading Black voices of our time are saying/ feeling/ and existing at this moment of deep historical transformation.”

  For George Perry Floyd
  For Breonna Taylor
  For Philando Castile
  For Jamar Clark
  For Christopher Burns

  For Those lost to Covid-19

  —Edited by Shá Cage

   

   

• First Drafts, Broken Rules

  Date: 2017.03.19 | Category: Assignments, Imagining Love, Poetry, The Art of Writing | Response: 0

  First Drafts, Broken Rules

  Someone said, and many have repeated it-where the rumor started, I don’t know-that a writer shouldn’t send first drafts out for the public eye.  But, I am a writer who makes up her own rules, does her own thing, ‘cause someone said, and many have repeated, a writer needs to take risks or she will just sound like the choir (although I do like the music of choirs, but the point is sometimes I need to sing alone).

  On another note, a writer I truly respect told me I revise the energy, the spirit, the meaning out of my poetry when I revise.  It’s true, revising for me is like shopping.  Once my cart is full, I throw out some things, others I put back and exchange them for another.  Sometimes I do this again and again.  This basket of strawberries.  No, this one, the similes are endless.  These tomatoes on the vine.  No, these are are full of contradiction.  Chocolate marshmallow fudge ice cream.  No, vanilla, subtle.  This bread.  Yes, give me all the nuts, the flax, the wheat-concrete images. Yet, sometimes I just say, be gone, be gone.

  Some say a writer must write every day, early in the morning in fact.  Early for me is 10 a.m., and by then I am already running late.  I write when I’m sitting in a class and the demand is to write following the guidelines of a particular writing exercise.  Surprisingly, I’ve gotten some good poems this way.  But, I don’t often sit in writing classes.  My norm is, when self-pity fills my lungs, when anxiety and fear punch my stomach, when country songs and chic flicks don’t soothe my troubled soul, I reach for my 3 x 5 or my 4 x6 index cards, my leaking roller ball pen, and I write.  I number the front, the back.  The stack rises. The purge releases words I don’t know.  There’s a rhythm too it.  A longing.  A stunning revelation.

  It’s been months, years, sometimes only weeks.  Yesterday’s sorrows became yesterday’s poems.  I read them over and over mouthing each sound, whispering, repeating, louder now, faster now.  Until, I’m inside out, exhausted.

  Awake now, today now, I risk giving these poems to anyone that wants them, anyone that might need them, anyone that wants to rip them apart and theorize them.  This is a selfish gift.  A gift nonetheless.  Someday I may want to return, to revise, to revision-to edit, and I’ll know where they are, and that they served me well.  And maybe you will not notice the blemishes, but the possibility.  And maybe your next poem might be about your great-grandmother or begin with “If truth be told” and maybe you will give it to the world pleased with its inception, free with its release.

  ©Sherry Quan Lee, March 19, 2017

   

  IF I TOLD YOU THE TRUTH

  If truth be told my friend is a born again Christian, my son is a redneck.

  If truth be told, loneliness is my demon and always has been.

  My sister does not talk to me my mood swings cause her stress; she’s

  done it before, stopped loving me when I loved a woman,

  and the woman, my mother, well my sister stopped talking to her, too.

  If truth be told, according to Mother, I am white, white, white, but I’m not

  and neither is she.

  If truth be told I’m not a writer, my advisor was right they didn’t teach

  me and somehow I knew it was my fault.

  If truth be told I don’t want to go to church, or book stores or plays where

  I know I either have to listen or perform;

  or comedy clubs.

  If truth be told I want to see my three-year-old granddaughter.  My nine year old grandsons.

  If truth be told the gig is up-shopping, gambling, even eating and though the smoke has

  already cleared I don’t need therapy or an excuse to hide my feelings.

  my heart is an old open book full of clichés, chocolate truffle smears, and tears.

  If truth be told I have been cloistered-it’s not my calling but my situation.

  If truth be told my car isn’t safe, my house isn’t breathing, I could in a wink of an eye be homeless.

  If truth be told I don’t want to fly I don’t want to wander; I haven’t missed anything in 70 years.

  If truth be told I’ve fallen before, but this time the fracture wasn’t worth mending.

  If truth be told I want to sing it is done, get over it, I am over it.

  If truth be told there is nothing beyond survival, I have nothing to give you, the world

  is wound too tight we can only untie knots, try not to slip on the laces.

  If I told you the truth I always wanted to be the clown the stand-up comedian the one no one

  would guess wasn’t me.

  If I told you the truth I wouldn’t tell you the truth but ease into your life.

  If truth be told being of a certain age is not what someone else says it is, not what you expect,

  and everyday is a question mark.

  To tell the truth today I looked out my window.  Satisfied.  Rocking. Back and

  forth, catonic-like, rocking.

  If I told you the truth the youth have the words, the works, the camaraderie, the meet and greets,

  the relationships.  Solidarity. Each other’s backs.

  If I told you the truth I’m not a bridge, never pretended to be one.   Every breath, every step difficult.

  If truth be told it’s too late for me to be anything, but

  righteous.  And, alone.  And, lonely.

  The truth is I’m tired.  It’s late.  I have [no] regrets.

  The truth is I don’t want to recycle.  Spin it anyway you want, but I won’t step outside

  my skin. The stretch is all mine.  Was mine.

  If truth be told the world sees no one, story becomes someone else’s theory, and you

  and I don’t meet online, or in a bar, in the future or the past.

  The truth is tomorrow, I might leave my house, walk to the mailbox, but today in this moment

  I’m in my pj’s, eating popcorn, watching Netflix.

   

  ©Sherry Quan Lee

  March 18, 2017

   

  Saint Patrick’s Day 2017 (1948-    )

   

  Dear red hair son of the Irish plantation owner do you know how complicated you’ve made my life?  You, so absent in your southern ways.  A prickle in history not so long gone, nameless, yet, ever present in my naming.  Did your father teach you not to fear consequences, did he tell you my great-grandmother was yours for the taking because he owned her.  Or did he say, hands off, son, she’s mine?  Money can’t buy everything, it certainly can’t buy complacency.  But, yes, Ms. Greer kept your house clean and the both of you, sons of southern hospitality, well fed.  And you, in return, paid her in lust, in rape, in pregnanc(ies).  Sure there were the rumors, you loved her, my great-great grandmother, her glistening, black skin and textured thick hair; strong legs, warm hands; but, it wasn’t a love story.  But grandmother was born anyways.  Beautiful, free, and independent.  It was her own doing she traveled North, married a man with his own black white history and the babies kept coming.  Mother denies she is born black, but if black was a lie, she would have nothing to lie about and I, her daughter, would have no truths to tell, secrets to uncover.  So many secrets that have filled books and heartache and joy- sometimes joy- knowing there once was a plantation and a red hair boy, but if she had only known she really needed only this, this one poem, this one little splash of green, a bit of humor, and a blind eye, if she only knew she didn’t have to give up her life to know who she is, if she had known.

   

  Sherry Quan Lee

  ©March 18, 2017