Industrial Strength Clean, pen and ink on graph paper,
doodle © 2008 by ybonesy. All rights reserved.
I went to a laundromat today
14 quarters per load
white towel with colors
it was my only white
Like the mom
and the boy
who likes to put the quarters
into the machine
They’re the only
whites in the place
Two women speaking
Spanish
sound like they’re
cussing out
the spin cycle
A black man
with white hair
A black woman
looks to be his daughter
select the washer next to mine
Mostly there are
Indians
eating French fries
between
folding sweat pants and Wrangler jeans
I like it here
like church on a Sunday
morning
the machines hum
a white noise
Like parishoners singing
a low hymn
cleansing our
lives
washing the sand out
of our pants
and the stains
from our panties
and my heart
Industrial strength clean
is like mass
or the world as I see it
bigger than I am
no bleach required
whites and colors
spinning round
together
faithful
forever faithful
-Related to post Got Poetry (National Poem In Your Pocket Day)
great poem–images are right on the mark
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Thank you. Your heart makes our nitty-gritty white and we set back in awe towards the picture of what lays underfoot.
Good poem it depicts what each of us rewrites with our own life. Thus we hear the different words, but rejoice over the same in essence. Have a look at http://arthiker.wordpress.com/2008/04/13/tales-in-disguise/
I would greatly appreciate your feedback.
Thank you once again.
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This poem made my morning.
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Thanks, Scot, Tomas, and Paul.
Scot, I just happened to pop over to your website and was blown away by your Writer’s Block poem.
Tomas, I will definitely check out your link.
Paul, long time no see. Your comment made mine 8) .
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ybonesy, the poem came out great. I love it with the image, too. Maybe I’ll read your poem for National Poem In Your Pocket Day this Thursday.
We were talking yesterday about the process of writing poetry. How hard it is to pare words down to their bare essentials. Did you find it difficult to write this poem? And what has inspired you to write poetry these last few weeks?
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Wonderful! The placing of church images next to the spinning and humming of the machines really makes this poem come alic=ve with sound. And the color, or non color white, how it appears in many guises:skin color, clothes, the hymns cleansing… a great poem, yb, with a fun drawing.
The ending seals the poem in a universal, positive light.
I used to teach in a school where I would often be one of the few persons not of color in the room. That said, my skin was darker than some who were considered African American. (I’ve got southern Italian in me, probably a pirate or two, at least I hope)) The kids would joke about it with me, saying, Ms. S, so and so is a lot lighter than you are.
Life is strange. We see what we’re taught to see. Poets uncover what is hidden. You did that here.
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Thanks, Christine. Of course, I almost hate to say this because I don’t want to imply that all comments aren’t awesome (they are), but given how much I admire your poetry, it means a lot hearing your positive feedback.
I wrote some poetry when I was in my 20s, but I haven’t revisited it much since. QM and I wrote one or two or so poems each in the planning phase of the blog — those are among our earliest posts, all pre-launch. We had energy for writing poetry, which I seem to have again. (QM, of course, has an absolutely glowing energy for the practice of haiku, which is catching to all of us.)
I’d like to write more poetry, although of all the writing forms, poetry is the most intimidating to me. I have a lot of baggage insofar as poetry is concerned, and I need to actually just write about that to help figure out why exactly that is. Definitely something to explore more deeply this month.
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ybonesy, I remember the energy I had for poetry in our pre-launch phase, too. I was really into poetry during the Writing Intensive. Something broke open in me that let me see it differently. But I get intimidated by writing poetry as well. Back when I wrote those poems (before we launched red Ravine), I remember not caring what others thought of them. They just had to come out.
Your poem has energy and I was excited when I heard you were writing poetry this week. I hope you will post another one if you’re up for it. I’d like to hear more about the Poetry Slam you attended, too.
Why do you think poetry can be more intimidating than other art forms? I’d like to hear from our readers, too, if they have thoughts on that question.
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Your comment, Christine, about the kids and what they told you about your skin color, reminded me of how innocent kids are about skin color. I remember when Dee first came to me, she was five years old, asking why she had a different color of skin than a girl in her class. The girl had an Irish mother and an Anglo-Saxon father — very light-skinned, blond, blond, blue eyes. The class was small but lots of diversity, and so it really opened up for me and Dee an early conversation, and a simple one, about the color of skin and what it means, and what it means to be beautiful.
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QM, lots of good questions you bring up. I’d like to hear, too, if readers find poetry to be intimidating and, if so, why.
I think for me, it goes back to Literature classes, especially in college, where we talked about poems and tried to discern what poets meant with their poems. I felt lost during those conversations. I felt unequipped to participate. The poems didn’t speak to me, not until I started reading Spanish and Latin American literature. But I was older then and I think was able to be less self-conscious and more open.
QM, regarding this poem, it came out fast. I can’t say it was difficult, but I also don’t think it was great. If I sat with it longer, gave it more time, edited it more carefully, it would have been better, I think. I guess I’m of the mind that a great poem needs time, needs revising. But I don’t have enough experience with it to know. When you write poetry, do you revise much? I’d like to hear more about your process.
What inspired me to write poems again? I thought at first it was the Poetry Slam that I went to on Friday. Those poet performers were clearly taking huge risks. Their poetry was alive. That certainly caused me to wait before I publish another poem I wrote, this one came to me last week. It came fast, and I think it’s not very good. But I don’t where they came from or why. Maybe the posts about poetry and poets have been functioning as a muse of sorts.
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A very interesting question. I think my best poems are those that just demand to come out, and are written quickly and directly without too much editing. And I feel that this your poem is a good example of this ybonesy – it speaks very directly and I love the combination of images.
I think setting out to write “poetry” can be daunting because you feel a need to use language in a particular way. That’s very different from setting out to write about some idea or image that has come into your head, and finding you want to use words more creatively and fully than prose – paying more attention to their shapes and sounds and relations, but only in service of the idea.
I used to write poems all the time when I was a child… it was something I did unselfconsciously. Then for years I didn’t write any, partly feeling daunted by the idea of poetry. But now I find myself in a space where I can’t seem to stop writing them – having a story I want to write about has brought back a lot of the unselfconsciousness I felt about writing poetry as a child. It’s fun and very satisfying.
If you decide you do want to carry on writing poems, ybonesy, then I look forward to the results!
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Thanks, Lirone. I shall continue.
This is a good differentiation for me: That’s very different from setting out to write about some idea or image that has come into your head, and finding you want to use words more creatively and fully than prose – paying more attention to their shapes and sounds and relations, but only in service of the idea.
I hadn’t realized before that it’s not that I ever set out to write any particular poem, just that it came out in that form. Wow. What a subtle difference, yet it’s so wide, that gap between sitting down to write a poem or just sitting down to write and having a poem come out.
Thanks for sharing that. I hope one of our regular readers is still still checking in on the comments in this post. We had an email exchange today about poetry and how to gauge when this type of creative expression is right or not. I honestly didn’t know how to answer that.
Hey, btw, are you posting a lot poems this month in honor of National Poetry Month? I’ll have to go check out your site and see for myself.
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[…] for more ways to celebrate poetry? Check out ybonesy’s poem and doodle, Sunday. Write a haiku and drop it into our haiku (one-a-day) post. Or read about Ted Kooser’s […]
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