What's The Story Morning Glory
Jan. 20th, 2010 07:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
masterofmidgetsMuch less grumpy today after an early night in and more Being Human than any rational person needs, so thank you all for putting up with my whining yesterday. ;D
I suspect a good bit of my bad temper yesterday was lingering subconscious panic over the idea of being workshopped in my poetry class today. I love the workshopping process and I think it's been tremendously helpful to me as a writer (even in the last year or so I can see how much my writing has changed for the better), but damn is it scary to do. There's always a part of me that goes into a workshop expecting everyone to collectively pan my writing as uninspired garbage and summarily boot me out of the writing program before I shame them too badly. The fact that this has not ever happened is immaterial; presumably the professors and other students who told me in previous classes they liked my writing were just humoring me because they didn't want to have to break the news to me themselves and hoped in good time I'd figure it out on my own.
My irrational mental drama notwithstanding, the workshop went really well, and I got some great feedback on my poem, both of the 'gratuitous praise of my literary genius' camp (well, okay, no. But there were very complementary things said about my metaphors!), and of the 'this sucks fix it now' camp, so I have some good ideas of where to start my revisions.
You had a morning glory inked on your wrist.
It caught my eye when you took my change and again
when you tucked a strand of hair behind your ear.
I saw it and I thought of the needle
piercing the thin transparent skin,
drawing out dark drops of blood and
replacing them with a vein-blue flower and vines
that twined around your wrist bones and grew into your sleeve.
It was one tattoo splashed across the inside of your wrist,
the edges blurring and the colors fading with age
until it looked like the skin you’d been born with.
When I saw it I could smell the flowers in your hair and the flowers
That blossomed where you walked.
Maybe if I had screwed my courage up to ask,
you would have told me that was why
you dug your fingers in against the pain and let a stranger make you A morning glory girl.
Told me how the tattoo-artist asked if you were sure,
a serpent grinning from his muscled shoulder.
it was your first tattoo
the first time you saw your skin was a canvas, unfinished.
Maybe someday the lines and colors on it would bleed together, like his,
until your unadorned nose and your lips were intrusions
in the artistry of your face.
but that day you just pushed your sleeve past your elbow
and offered up the pale skin of your wrist.
I suspect a good bit of my bad temper yesterday was lingering subconscious panic over the idea of being workshopped in my poetry class today. I love the workshopping process and I think it's been tremendously helpful to me as a writer (even in the last year or so I can see how much my writing has changed for the better), but damn is it scary to do. There's always a part of me that goes into a workshop expecting everyone to collectively pan my writing as uninspired garbage and summarily boot me out of the writing program before I shame them too badly. The fact that this has not ever happened is immaterial; presumably the professors and other students who told me in previous classes they liked my writing were just humoring me because they didn't want to have to break the news to me themselves and hoped in good time I'd figure it out on my own.
My irrational mental drama notwithstanding, the workshop went really well, and I got some great feedback on my poem, both of the 'gratuitous praise of my literary genius' camp (well, okay, no. But there were very complementary things said about my metaphors!), and of the 'this sucks fix it now' camp, so I have some good ideas of where to start my revisions.
You had a morning glory inked on your wrist.
It caught my eye when you took my change and again
when you tucked a strand of hair behind your ear.
I saw it and I thought of the needle
piercing the thin transparent skin,
drawing out dark drops of blood and
replacing them with a vein-blue flower and vines
that twined around your wrist bones and grew into your sleeve.
It was one tattoo splashed across the inside of your wrist,
the edges blurring and the colors fading with age
until it looked like the skin you’d been born with.
When I saw it I could smell the flowers in your hair and the flowers
That blossomed where you walked.
Maybe if I had screwed my courage up to ask,
you would have told me that was why
you dug your fingers in against the pain and let a stranger make you A morning glory girl.
Told me how the tattoo-artist asked if you were sure,
a serpent grinning from his muscled shoulder.
it was your first tattoo
the first time you saw your skin was a canvas, unfinished.
Maybe someday the lines and colors on it would bleed together, like his,
until your unadorned nose and your lips were intrusions
in the artistry of your face.
but that day you just pushed your sleeve past your elbow
and offered up the pale skin of your wrist.