about a shooting star

Last night, tight in a hammock

on the back porch, I could have sworn

I saw a star as terrified

as I was. If I made it out

correctly, she was dripping

down onto earth, her

blowtorch skirt caught

into a tidal wrap. If I made it out

correctly, her face was like the sun,

but lasted for half as long,

the pinkish white a rose

caught up between His world

and ours, never finding

where the falling petals go.

She must have known

something about fading out, taking

 the hit like a champ, turning

the other cheek as only

martyrs do lit up by nirvana;

zounds cased in bloody

bitter cracklings of dying light.

No, she could not have warmed

all of the world. No Jerusalem,

no Ipswich, no Milan. She barely had

the power to puncture the sky

when we, ungrateful people, turned to her

during night’s darkest hours like children

 afraid to close our eyes.

In a rain-filled soda can, I put

out my cigarette and walked inside. The crisp

orange ashes looked nothing like her,

but  the spreading and the sinking alone

made it awful.

warning

i usually write free verse, but this is a sonnet i had to write for class. sonnets, or at least shakespearean sonnets, have a certain rhyme pattern, length, and are in iambic pentameter. this is the second or third sonnet i've ever written, but i wanted to get some constructive comments on it before class on tuesday, because i know it's not perfect at all. hint: i can't change the last word in each line because they were assigned to us.

The Garden Sonnet

A figurine surrounds an earthen pillow;

vanilla buds are full with summer’s sap.

Gardenias caught inside the vined vanilla

are fading, blossoms tugged into the wrap.

But what is anxious, solid, fresh and new

is what takes hold of gardens grown.

And no great master tires of the view,

although the grief itself is hardly known.

Inside the flowers, barren, cold and white

are tiny seedlings crying “Sun,” but can’t

believe in something strong to quite ignite

a creature crowded, quiet: saddened plant.

Vanilla vines forget our God with murder:

 surround gardenias; push their damage further.

quick update

well, i didn't get a job as copy-editor, but hopefully by winter i will have a feature column. as for right now, i have chosen to continue writing opinions columns. not so much because i need to (i think i all ready validated myself in that sense), but because i really do have so much to say, and for some reason, saying it to an entire college campus feels oh so good.

this semester, i am really focusing on poetry. i am taking a class under a published poet, and so i am hoping to really get things done. i need to have a poem of mine published. soon.

with disappointments come blessings. so far i am doing very well in that class; i had my poem workshopped and i don't think i'm being prideful in saying mine did very well. i am writing the best poems of my life right now, and i need to take advantage of it. for tuesday, i am putting in a poem i am very confident about. i can't wait for people to see and read it. i did post it on myspace, but i have edited it so far to have a more sinister feeling. the title, however, is sunflowers in august. i like it because it has some abstract elements without being too confusing.

so, right now, that is my life. poetry poetry poetry. i am trying to read as much of it as i can, write it as much as i can.

the hardest part is finding publications that would take my work. you have to be familiar with their submissions in the past, so that process isn't going to be too much fun, but i really want my poetry to get into a respected journal. of course i can't get into stuff like the paris review right now, but i am going to try to put my luck into other outlets.

What the hell?!?!?!?!?!!?

Well, tomorrow I go in and interview for a copy-editing position at the DT. I decided to look up my past editors and see how well they written for the DT in the past. After about two minutes of probing, it is EVIDENT that my current editor doesn't even know how to write. It kind of fires me up for tomorrow. I want to go in there and prove to all of those assholes that not only can I edit, but I can write as well. Apparently the two have yet to come hand in hand.

I mean, I understand that at the DT, the older writers get offered the job, but JESUS. I wouldn't have passed High School English with the way they write and the way they write grammatically incorrect articles.

Although I have only been writing Opinions Columns for three months, I feel as though I should have been offered some sort of job, even over the sucky editors who have been writing longer than I have simply because I have the SKILLS NEEDED.

 I think most of it is because the newspaper is student-run, so a lot of it comes down to the friend zone. I don't know anybody at the paper, really. Apart from some phone calls and emails, I really don't know many of the people who work there.

Today I studied copy-editing for two or three hours, and with just that I am confident that I will go in and smoke the staff.

I hope to move up in the rankings and take the top position one day, if only to prove that "friends" shouldn't run the paper; people capable of the job should run the paper.

Therefore, if I am not offered a position tomorrow for either this semester or next semester, I will not be writing for the DT. Compared to the other editors, they have to be crazy if they don't hire me.

let's play a game

It's called "Which of Jaclyn's poems is better?"

Here's what you do. Mark (1) or (2) in the comment section. The poem that wins will be the poem I present to a published poet who will be my professor this year. Needless to say it's important.

(1)

Letters Back and Forth

No goose bumps, but veins

unafraid;  won't Let me hold myself

back. I dive into your words.  The hair

on my head with waves tight waive

their rights and fall, warm and open.

Read every pencil mark. Compared them

 to God's Word.  Bathed in them

like water lukewarm and oiled, falling into

my ears and between my toes.

Half-erased, verbs become war

stories tucked into Catholic antique stores

and libraries whose books hold the walls

up and whisper famous lines into the dust.

Crooked spines smell a fire; push together

and huddle close.

White candles sit on the desk, as nosy

as  glass beads. I wet my fingers and

 keep them in the dark.

************

(2)

Up Before The Sun

Let  you come

and go inside of me, and

know the pain from pushing off;

have devoted myself to learning it-

a number of pulls afforded.

It is not yellow

eyes I am afraid of. It is

myself dry and peeled back,

the dust clippings of wings.

Lost too many fingertips from

somebody else's songs, parting words

not as stable as your laugh, deep

and tough. Hair fuming with

the smell of cigarette ash. Pieces of

flesh recounted and stored

in morning's bitter test drive,

night meets the hum of birds.