These poems are the end result of an experimental (for me), creative process: taking books that have been meaningful/special to me and pulling the 9th, 12th, 19th, and 79th words from them, forming said words into a poem. (To explain: My birthday is 09/12/1979.) Once I had the words, I decided to punctuate, capitalize/decapitalize, combine/separate the words however I wanted to. I also decided that, if I had multiples of any one word, I only had to use said word once (but could use it no more times than I had pulled it from the texts). This, then, is the result — for now.
Words from 22 books I read between ages 17 and 38:
john 4:51
when father died,
my miracle, the Word theory (an a and)
hung around
him, fighting a spotted pierglass.
mother…she was in possession
of that single memory,
a missionary He let fly.
You’re it: that play
which blocks the narrow way
unless every “would i…” — cardinals
in flight to/between fair
banks — is thanksome.
i’m caught, taken short-
ly beside — or onto — that drive,
sunday gone bad,
book (the last “will”) blackened.
and?
and??
Words from 16 books I read between ages 0 and 16:
Sam, Margaret, and James’s page
was my own–
his/her/their quilt there
about me like summer.
But it didn’t peter
as sunsets had;
nothing died,
started to blister.
It’s breakfast:
through but in.
The very ground now,
that of an old wood,
it towers on.
Everyone–
even the small, the least–
will a-front time.
for everything which is yes 