Self-Aggrandizement: Writing Archives

A Matter of Degree
Filed June 11, 2006 9:12 AM.

I'm in Denver at the moment, having come in to town to watch my brother graduate from business school - an event that, officially, makes me the least educated member of my family.

The graduation ceremony itself, on top of the usual array of addresses and pontifications, involved every single graduating graduate student's name being announced, as they headed up to shake the Chancellor's hand and receive their diploma.

This was, in short, not a fast process. So, several hours in, to entertain myself, I scawled out a bit of poetry on the back of my program:

Commencement
[A triplet, in haiku verse]

I.
Pomp and circumstance
book-end a mind-numbing line
of young graduates

II.
A sea of black robes
undifferentiated
they flow across stage

III.
I sit in the crowd
ready to stab out my eye
with a dull pencil

haiku
Filed April 7, 2004 11:22 AM.

Quiet start of spring
Brings morning larks and green buds
Outside my window

photo fiction
Filed January 29, 2004 2:20 PM.

He only thought about her when the weather turned cold, when the sudden appearance of fur-lined boots clomping on pavement, of breath steaming visibly from lipsticked mouths, of wool gloves and scarves rustling quietly against thick winter jackets added together to conjure up her memory.

Even then, she came to him in pieces: the soapdish hollow of her clavicle. She came to him in sideways glances: pretending not to look back over her shoulder as she tossed her hair. She came to him as single words spoken, as textures he could almost feel pressed against his fingers.

When she came to him like this, he would stop midstride, concentrate, try to coalesce the parts of her into a full, vivid whole, before the jostling passersby could bring him back to the present, where he stood alone on the sidewalk, feeling oddly hollow, a dull, cold pain in his stomach, his throat, his chest.

A Matter of Degree Filed June 11, 2006 9:12 AM.

haiku Filed April 7, 2004 11:22 AM.

photo fiction Filed January 29, 2004 2:20 PM.

A Matter of Degree
Filed June 11, 2006 9:12 AM.

haiku
Filed April 7, 2004 11:22 AM.

photo fiction
Filed January 29, 2004 2:20 PM.