Beowulf parody: Act 1

Act 1

The first place Monya stopped, in her silver chariot

With her life packed in the back

Was a big brown house in the land of cows and dirt roads

And the cows greeted her with a sweetness

She had never tasted

And the roads rumbled their casual solitude

Every time Monya’s silver chariot rolled across them.

It was summertime in the land of cows and dirt roads

And the days were long and lazy

And filled with the ballads of Adele

And the smell of hay.

On one of her days of leisure, Monya, lover of dirt

Determined that that day of leisure would be the first test of her mettle

She stepped into the sunlight’s clear view

And bared her chest to that most powerful star.

The sun saw her and decided in her aloof curiosity

To send the most powerful of creatures, neither cruel nor kind

To pass judgement on Monya, lover of the earth.

The beast came out of the wood in tooth and claw and fur

And Monya opened her bare chest to the creature

And took it in her strong arms.

In it felt her wrap around it and judged her worthy.

And as it decided it melted back into the woods

As quickly as it came.

And thus Monya had proved her mettle in the first of her adventures

In the land of cows and dirt roads.

Monya met many brave women of the earth in that summertime

Eager to hear of her encounter with the creature of tooth and claw and fur

And boldest was Maddy with hair of sunlight

Who wiped dust from Monya’s face

And kissed Monya with lips as soft as the naked earth

And hands as rough as the raw mountaintops

And whispered kindness into the lopsided ears of her hound.

But Maddy with the sunlight hair and her lopsided hound

Disappeared with the dawn. They took Monya’s

Trousers for memories and Monya was left wander the dirt roads

In bare feet, search of the rising sun.

She looked about but the trees whispered taunts

And the ground prickled at her bare feet.

There were no signs of cows or other travelers

And then--

The smell of sun cooked hay

Monya breathed deeply and began to walk

With tired tread, and thus

She found the sun and her home.

That day in the land of cows and dirt roads

The sun rose and whispered death into the ear of the king of that land

So that he did make a sacrifice of birds of the sky

Who were earthbound with gluttony.

And the king of the land of cows and dirt roads

Called upon Monya, lover of the earth

To help with this sacrifice. So that she too

Did spill the blood of the birds of the sky.

And that day as she spilled blood

She listened to death work next to her.

And by the end of the day Monya, lover of the dirt

Had heard the secrets death whispers

In a voice too low for most souls to hear.

Death had told her of her next adventure

And so the next sunrise Monya, lover of dirt

Packed up her life in the back of her silver chariot

And drove again, into the sunset.

Beowulf Parody Introduction

Introduction

So, the dancers, in days gone by

Worshiped many heroes with their endless

Internet and the greatest of those was

Monya, of the earth, sky, water, and fire.

Monya, beloved daughter of Rose and Steve

Rose and Steve who together slew the great

Beast of Frisbee. Monya, from a long line

Of empowering men and powerful

Women. Great leaders and fighters and lovers.

And the greatest of them all was Monya.

Monya, who one day while in the tallest branches of an apple tree

Heard the call of the earth and sky

Saying “Come, play with us.

“There is much we would show you if you would listen.”

So Monya, lover of the dirt, packed her life

Into her silver chariot and drove

Into the setting sun.

Winter in Western Massachusetts

The star boy looks over the snow
With his club hanging from his belt,
The biting cold makes him shine all the brighter
He is the only one tonight
Not counting down the days until spring.

A Missed Connection

While going through my poetry folder on google drive I happened upon this old poem. I wrote this the November I was 19 in a bakery in Traverse City Michigan. A lot has changed since then. A lot is the same. It was originally intended as a slam poem so if the spirit moves you to read it out loud, by all means, do so.

To the woman behind the counter at the bakery:

I’d like to think that were we not in a bakery, that is, your place of work, I would be the first in what I can only assume is a long line of queer women falling at your feet and penning love poetry. As it is, I will never know the courage it would take to walk up to you and ask for your number. As it is, I will only ever know you as bakery babe.

Or, more accurately, the femme presenting short haired person behind the counter at Sweet Tartlette who smiled at me for half a second while taking my order and in doing so inspired an influx of imagined intimacy. But for the sake of ease, I will call you bakery babe.

Who am I to cut off bits of your identity for the sake of ease, you might ask me, bakery babe. And I have no good answer. I am a queer and bumbling girl who liked your smile, bakery babe, and nothing else. Might I have been something else, had I not met you at your place of work? I really don’t know, bakery babe.

A lot of that depends on if you’re interested in me, bakery babe. Does my curling dark hair strike at the tinder of your imagination too, bakery babe? Will you go home and regale your friends with the tale of the striking customer who held your eye for a moment too long while ordering her pecan pie?

Maybe the bigger question, bakery babe, is if you’re interested in women at all. Are you queer, bakery babe? What did your parents say when you came out to them? Were you just a child, fresh out of the people-grinding middle school hallways? Did they wrap soothing sentences around your tear stained face? Did they tell you that you were silly to think that they would love you any less? Before you left the room, bakery babe, did you glance back to catch them exchanging a worried look? Did the worried look rub you with anxiety, bakery babe? Could you find the strength within yourself to believe their worried looks to be an imagined nothing?

And what about your old best friend, bakery babe? The one, you know who I mean, who you met in first grade, and from then on, got on like a house on fire. Only, when you got to high school did she she meet a boy? Was she so infatuated she never wanted to talk about anything else, even you, anymore? Did you cry when you walked in on them making out on your own bed? Or was it when she caught you staring at the tantalizing curves of the star of the field hockey team, playfully slapped you on the shoulder and called you a dyke? Did you believe the smile on her lips when she told you nothing would change after you came out? Or because you had known her for years on end, could you tell when she lied, even to herself? How many times did her answering machine pick up before you got the message, bakery babe? How did you mourn her loss?

Was it hard to get this job for yourself, bakery babe? Did you shy away from the hungry look your interviewer gave you across the counter? Did you wince when he listed personable as a prerequisite to employment? Did you square your shoulders and smile back without a second thought? Did you imagine the cost of your college text books before you leaned into your interviewer's leer and said you always prioritized the customer?

How many men have hit on you from across the counter of the Tartlette, bakery babe? Do your coworkers nudge you under the ribs and tell you to be friendlier to the men who tip so sparingly? Do they tell you that the one with the good jawline who left his number is the cutest boy they’ve seen on this side of the great lakes? Do they ever question why you don’t call the dozens of men and boys who left their number? Why don’t they also understand how awful it is to be hit on at work?  Aren’t they also women, bakery babe? Does it become harder to find that solidarity every day that they go on about their boyfriends? When they tell you their boyfriends, they very boys who delighted in your torment in high school are the cutest, most sensitive type of boy? How many extraneous details could you tell me about your co-worker’s boyfriends, bakery babe? How many days in a row have you gone without passing the Bechdel test?

Do you write poetry, bakery babe? Do you scribble it down in that little blue notebook you always carry or on the back of receipts and napkins when you have nothing else? Do you construct couplets while you work? When you and your co-workers are up to your elbows in dough and flour and mixed local berries do you write metaphors about the already over sexualized female form? Do you pride yourself on being able to tell the difference between ‘iambic’ and ‘polemic’ but use ‘raven tresses’ to describe a lover’s black hair anyway? Do you rhyme ‘my true love’ with ‘the angles above’ because it was convenient? Do you think that ‘the stars shone in her eyes’ is the truest sentence you could ever write?

Bakery babe, do you know what love is? Have you ever tried to climb on a roof, just to sing literally from the roof tops? Have you ever known with certainty that you couldn’t hit a note if it climbed in front of you and sat still but still let the sound go, from the bottom of your lungs, because you wanted your voice to feel as free as the rest of you? Do you know what it’s like to have a name on the tip of your tongue as you fall asleep, bakery babe? To hold the name, or maybe names on your tongue when you wake up. To hold it in your head all day, no matter what else is happened. To hold them as gently as a sun-gold tomato, so as not to bruise or split them. To hold them as tightly as a frightened bird, terrified they might fly away. To want to die for them, to live for them, to live with them? Do you know how desperate that feels? Did it feel more desperate to you because the love you felt was forbidden? Did you treasure that forbidden ache more because at least you felt something? Were there countless nights you sat under the blankets in your childhood bed and cried yourself to sleep or do you just write that in your poetry? Do you know how long you have to cry to cry yourself to sleep, bakery babe?

Bakery babe, do you think this poem is about you? Do you hear this poem years later, in an audience at a coffee shop in Vancouver and clutch the hand of your lover next to you a little tighter. Do you whisper this poem to yourself at home under a fleece blanket into your chamomile tea? Have you bookmarked this poem, bakery babe, so that you can reread it when the winter nights stretch on for so long you're not sure when the morning will come? Does this poem make you smile with a fond nostalgia for your younger self, bakery babe? Or does it just make you miss home?

Sponge Girl

My dear (and imaginary) friends and followers. I have just started college and it is exhausting. Here's a poem.

“Sponge girl” They call me.

“Soak in the new information sponge girl” They demand

“Soak in the new and when we squeeze you, you should drip with content, sponge girl.”

And so every day I fill myself and every day I empty myself

Wiping each new day clean so that the next day I may fill myself even more.

Happy New Year

The smoke of our fire spindles towards the frozen indigo sky in threads of grey

Breaking apart constellations with sloppy stitches of opacity

Tearing the neat order of the constellations marching

across the sky into a shifting cacophony of lines.

And you and I sit

Knotted about our fireplace

Cocooned in scarves and quilted jackets, wrapping ourselves about

A circle of rocks with a birchbark-fed flame.

The eager puppy flame licks us with eager tongue but cannot warm us.

And the cold sits, like an old friend,

in our bones.

Squirrel poem

We assume squirrels bury acorns and loose them
But what if every acorn they bury is a lovingly planted tree
And they only eat the acorns that they must.

Can you imagine a kind prayer with each scoop of dirt through those tiny paws
"Grow and be strong.
Grow and be strong."