Poetry

WITH A CONFIDENT AND DETERMINED HAND

With one movement of the hand,
another piece of clay falls to the floor.
After a few more strokes,
a figure begins to appear.
Somehow, he always seems to find
the art within the clay.

I could never do it.
The blob of clay remains a blob
despite my endeavors to make something beautiful.
Even after years of watching,
my hands have failed to imitate his movements,
or, at least, produce the same result.

The problem is, he makes it seem
so easy. His eyes determined and unblinking
with his lower lip jutted out in a pout,
he sees something others can’t
and he knows just how to let it emerge.
I could watch him for hours,
pushing and molding the clay
with tools until it is just so.
When he begins to use his hands,
you know he is in the final stretch.
His large, masculine hands move the clay
more delicately than one could imagine.

It is worse when he draws.
When he begins, the whole page seems like a mess of scribbles,
but the more his hand moves over and around the page,
the lines become more defined
and the figures materialize.
As he presses harder upon the pencil,
the details I wouldn’t have thought of come out:
the dimple in her left cheek,
the mole on his right forearm,
that one strand of hair that won’t stay in place.

He says anybody could learn.
He tried to teach me once.
With my awkward, inexperienced hand,
I mimicked his movements and confidence and followed his instructions,
and a face appeared.
It was not a face that I foresaw,
but it was a face.
Sometimes when he’s not around, I open a notebook
and try to replicate his movements
once more,
but nothing comes out
but scribbles on a blank page.



Here is an attempt at prose-poetry:


MUSE

When did it become so hard? Writing words on a page without any intent or purpose used to be what I did for fun after a long day of school in the fourth grade. I pumped out poems, short stories, and even short books quicker than my family could keep up reading them. I looked forward to submitting my words to writing contests and took pride in the fact that I won a ribbon or two. I was going to become a writer; there was no doubt in my mind. As time went on, our ’94 Gateway began to gather more and more dust. I would go back and tweak previous works, but I had felt as though I had run out of words to write and things to say. Eventually, I abandoned it all. My dad bought a new computer six years after my writing career, and in the transition, all my work was lost. When he told me, I shrugged. I had moved on to bigger and better things. I was going to become a veterinarian. And now I had a boyfriend. Sometimes I think about going back under the basement stairs and pulling out the computer that once held my prized works. Maybe that was my muse. But I doubt I ever will. Instead, I need to seek new words to say, more stories to tell.